To be able to understand future firm performance it is important to recognize and correctly evaluate what constitutes a signal. This study investigates if provisions contain signalling value regarding future firm performance. The study is conducted on firms listed on the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm from 2001 to 2010, constituting a sample of 2173 firm years. All the provision data has been manually collected from each of the firm’s annual reports. By using both univariate and multivariate analyses, the study provides new evidence regarding the association between provisions and firm performance. The findings indicate that firms who recognise restructuring provisions experience a performance improvement. The performance improvement is tied to the size of the restructuring provision i.e. the signal. Warranty and litigation provisions show no indications of having any relation to future firm performance. Thus, large restructuring provisions contain a signal of performance improvement, whereas warranty and litigation provisions do not. The thesis contributes to existing literature by providing new insight of how provisions functions as signals of firm performance

Economic growth is a major concern for state governments. One method that states use to spur economic growth is recruiting firms to relocate or expand within their state. Headlines and press releases from high–profile recruitment cases suggest that states compete with each other to recruit firms. The primary question in this dissertation is whether states compete to recruit firms. A unique panel data set that captures a state’s firm recruitment effort now provides the opportunity to answer this question. A variety of econometric methods (2SLS, MLE, and GS2SLS–GMM) isolate the spatial interdependence effect, and the empirical results show states do compete with each other to recruit firms. Another question answered in this dissertation is whether it matters how researchers measure a state’s effort to recruit firms. The results reveal that it is important to capture only spending related to firm recruitment, as other measures provide fundamentally different results. In addition, this dissertation tests for the nature of rivalry between states and shows that states compete with other states that are economically or demographically similar. The results of competition are not only robust, but large in magnitude as well. States are very responsive to their rival’s effort to recruit firms. Can states stop spending on firm recruitment? If they do, the other states will capture their potential firms–thus the competition to recruit firms does not seem likely to end soon.

Blockbuster and Netflix are two firms in the home video rental market that experienced vastly different outcomes. Netflix vastly increased its firm value while Blockbuster lost its dominant market position and slid into bankruptcy. This paper examines the strategies pursued by Blockbuster and Netflix and the impact these strategies had on firm value. This paper finds that on average Blockbuster’s strategies did not have a significant impact on its firm value while Netflix’s strategies increased its firm value. Specifically, Netflix’s strategies in the areas of service improvement and promotional activity created the most value. The strategies each firm pursued in product line expansion provided value for Blockbuster but reduced value for Netflix.

A complex adaptive systems approach has been permeating organizational studies and the field of supply network management helping to describe and explain supply network dynamics and emergent inter-firm structures. This has improved our theoretical knowledge of the nature of supply networks transforming raw materials into products, within a constantly changing environment. From the early days of simple structures, describing bi-lateral, local arrangements between firms for the creation of relatively simple products, we are now in an environment of various supply network archetypes, describing different global sourcing regimes of highly integrated, sophisticated products within multi-tier networks. This thesis is a study of the coevolution of the firm and supply network in the commercial aerospace manufacturing sector producing jetliners of 100 or more seats. One of the contributions of this research is to demonstrate how the holistic approach of complexity science can be applied to describe, understand and gain new insight into the coevolution of the firm and the supply network. Based on the findings of multiple interviews and questionnaires in eight global aerospace firms across multiple supply chain tiers, this research finds high-performing clusters of inter-firm characteristics, plus the aspects of structure and integration which deliver the supply network performance. Practitioners can use these specific results to examine their own firms and the new coevolutionary conceptual framework developed in the thesis may aid future research studies of complex adaptive systems in practice. The simple survey design and analysis method used in the final research stage of this research, has the potential for use in other industries, markets and other complex adaptive systems generally to examine performance outcomes and the effects of having or adopting new inter-firm characteristics. Finally, implications for policy include the potential to legitimize supply networks in order to stimulate competition and innovation in the economy.

This dissertation presents the findings of an exploratory collective case-study examining corporate innovations arising from voluntary dyadic engagement between UK firms and nonprofit organisations (NPOs) focused on social issues. Whilst the extant literature demonstrates that pro-active engagement with NPOs can assist firms innovate, there has been no empirical work which explores the relationship between the engagement and the innovation outcome: a gap which this research addresses. In doing so, it illustrates how concepts and constructs from the innovation management literature can be applied usefully to the stakeholder and cross-sector collaboration field. To date, empirical studies addressing firm-NPO engagements have concentrated overwhelmingly on partnerships to address environmental issues. This study provides insights into cross-sector engagements focused on addressing social issues. Using a form of analytic induction to evaluate qualitative case-data from ten dyadic engagements, this dissertation addresses the question: “how do firms innovate through engagement with social issues nonprofit organisations?” The research found that product and service innovations resulted from engagements where the firm had an external stakeholder orientation and was focused on delivering tangible demonstrations of corporate responsibility. Process innovations, by contrast, were produced from engagements where firms had an internal stakeholder orientation. Two distinctions were noted in the innovation process, too. Firstly, a more exploratory approach to dyadic engagement activities, which resulted in an emergent innovation process; and secondly, a focused and pre-determined search activity to exploit the resources of the nonprofit partner which demonstrated a more planned innovation process. In addition, two distinct boundary spanning roles were identified: in dyads with no direct management involvement in the engagement, the role was associated with formal responsibilities from senior management to „manage‟ innovation opportunities and outcomes. In dyads where senior management were involved, there was no such formality; the boundary spanner acted to „facilitate‟ search and exploration to locate opportunities for innovation through idea exchange. The application of innovation constructs to the business and society field has enabled firm engagement with nonprofit stakeholders to be examined through a new lens and demonstrated how firms innovate from such relationships. In particular it has highlighted the key role played by the firm boundary spanner (relationship manager) and how this role alters depending on senior management involvement: a distinction which has not been made in the extant literature and would benefit from further examination.

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Las organizaciones son organismos complejos de los cuales tenemos solo un conocimiento muy reducido, en parte porque se tiende a investigar solo una parte de ellas. El objetivo de esta tesis es aprofundizar en el conocimiento económico de las dinámicas de las organizaciones, señalando que las empresas no solo interactúan en los mercados ni funcionan como entidades aisladas, sino que hay interacción entre el funcionamiento interno y externo. El primer capitulo postula que si los trabajadores de una empresa bloquean las reformas que pueden perjudicarles, entonces interviniendo también en la manera en la que las empresas tienen que competir en los mercados puede crear efectos positivos para los empleados, consiguiendo que al final estén también de acuerdo con las reformas. Combinar reformas crea externalidades positivas, que si están bien planteadas puede reducir la resistencia para los cambios necesarios.El segundo capitulo considera un mercado muy concentrado y estudia los efectos de las decisiones en inversión y la organización interna de las empresas fusionadas en la eficiencia y en la estabilidad de las fusiones. No se asume que les fusiones generaran automáticamente ganancias en eficiencia: aunque pueden generar economías de escala, y por lo tanto costes más bajos, las empresas necesitan invertir para conseguirlas. Además, estas inversiones pueden ser frustradas por el conflicto que puede haber entre las empresas fusionadas. Se muestra que, incluso cuando no hay conflicto, les empresas no siempre invierten para conseguir ganancias en eficiencia aunque para ellas es beneficioso fusionarse. Cuando hay conflicto incluso puede haber pérdidas en eficiencia y por lo tanto hay muchas fusiones que no son beneficiosas. Como consecuencia, si los directores de las empresas subestiman la posibilidad de conflicto, consideraran que es positivo fusionarse aunque después se encontraran con una empresa menos eficiente y con beneficios inferiores a los que tenían por separado.El tercer capitulo ofrece una explicación formal de porque unas fusiones fracasan al mismo tiempo que otras son exitosas. Conseguimos predicciones investigando la interacción entre dos aspectos importantes de las fusiones, problemas de integración entre las empresas fusionadas y la recopilación de información sobre las sinergias que se produce antes de la fusión. Diferencias culturales y pocos esfuerzos de integración son recurrentemente mencionados en la prensa como el principal factor que explica el fracaso de la obtención de las sinergias. Estudios en teoría de las organizaciones argumentan que, aunque mejores resultados son asociados con seleccionar un mejor emparejamiento, el grado de éxito depende del proceso de implementación de la fusión. Pero, según nuestros conocimientos, explicar fracasos de fusiones modelando el proceso post-fusión es una novedad en la literatura económica. / The aim of this thesis is broadening the reach of economic research on mergers and industry dynamics, pointing out that mergers are not only done because of firms' needs and do not only create effects in firms' markets. Indeed, dynamics are largely driven by managers and have their impact on employees. We have created some situations were internal functioning and external operating of firms interact.The first chapter claims that if employees in a firm block law reforms that could hurt them, then intervening also in the way how firms should compete in their markets may create positive effects for employees, making them in the end to agree on reforms. Combining reforms creates positive externalites, which if well used can lower resisitance for necessary changes. This is because reforms in the labour and product markets are complementary, and therefore the loosing side of one reform will be the winning side of the other reform. Also, reforms in both markets increase welfare more than a single reform and show thus synergy effects. Moreover, it offers a possible way out of the so called "sclerosis" effect. When frictions in markets are high, interest groups enjoy higher rents and oppose more reforms and thus the markets that need most a reform, are most stuck in a sclerosis. But high frictions in one market make it easier to reform the other market and therefore the sclerosis in one market can cancel out the sclerosis in the other market.In the second chapter we reconsider the market power-effciency trade-off made by competition authorities and stress the importance of both strategic decision making of managers and internal organisation issues after mergers have taken place. The possibility that a merged firm may become more efficient does not mean that these gains will be actually realised as is now widely assumed in the economics literature. A newly merged firm brings together different management teams, which can lead to distrust and conflict and therefore possibly less investment. Our approach facilitates the understanding of why some mergers may fail to become more efficient or even fail to happen. Moreover, it allows us to pin down some pitfalls for the regulator when taking into account efficiency gains in merger decisions. Our model gives also a potential explanation for merger failures. If the managers underestimate the potential conflict, they may end up in an unprofitable merger.The third chapter offers a formal explanation of why some mergers fail and others succeed. We achieve predictions by investigating the interaction between two important aspects of merging: post-merger integration difficulties and the pre-merger gathering of information about obtainable merger synergies. Organisation theorists argue that the a meger success is likely to occur depends upon the process of implementing the merger. But in the economics literature it is a novalty to explain merger failures from the explicit modelling of the post-merger process. Some of our results are intuitively clear as is the fact that less precise information leads to more failures. Less precise information makes it easier to make judgement mistakes and to rely too much on the good news that your partner wants to merge with you. When costs of merging are lower, more merger failures are encountered. For example, during stock market booms when it is easier to find funding for buying up other firms, considerably more failures are indeed encountered. One of our most interesting results finally is that when the punishment of not-integrating is higher, the possibility for failures is reduced. The cultural differences that could derail effective synergy realisation are more carefully attended to because of managers' heightened sensitivity.

This paper investigates how the size of a firm affects its licensing strategy for patented technologies through empirical analysis of the characteristics at the technological, firm, and industry levels. Only firms with commercialization capabilities are considered in this study in order to compare the incentives of utilizing technologies internally with the incentives of selling them for licensing revenue. Focusing on licensing motivated by non-strategic purposes, empirical analysis shows that large companies are less willing to license patents that fit into their business focus, as well as those which have a low technological value in general. On the other hand, small firms are more inclined to license patents which are more relevant to their business focus, but less innovative on average. This study also finds that market share and competition intensity are important factors in their licensing decisions: the more competitive and the smaller the market share of the patents owned by large firms, the higher the chance that firms will list them on the market. In line with the revenue versus competition framework by Arora and Fosfuri (2003), this paper concludes that large firms are generally more concerned about the rent dissipation effect over the revenue effect from licensing, while the opposite is true for smaller firms.

Capital structure and companies’ performance are important to corporate finance. Therefore, firms take different strategies to adjust capital structure to get a better firm performance. However still the studies mostly conducted in one country setting or neglect the angle from listed companies across countries. This thesis encompasses 2 developed countries (Germany and Sweden) and a developing country (China) to test the impact from capital structure to firm performance of period 2003-2012 with more than 1200 listed companies in Germany and Sweden and more than 1000 listed companies in China. The result shows capital structure has a significant negative effect to firm performance in China, whereas, significant positive effect in 2 European countries before financial crisis happened in 2008. I also find institutional factors and economic crisis will affect this relationship too.

This paper investigates how the size of a firm affects its licensing strategy for patented technologies through empirical analysis of the characteristics at the technological, firm, and industry levels. Only firms with commercialization capabilities are considered in this study in order to compare the incentives of utilizing technologies internally with the incentives of selling them for licensing revenue. Focusing on licensing motivated by non-strategic purposes, empirical analysis shows that large companies are less willing to license patents that fit into their business focus, as well as those which have a low technological value in general. On the other hand, small firms are more inclined to license patents which are more relevant to their business focus, but less innovative on average. This study also finds that market share and competition intensity are important factors in their licensing decisions: the more competitive and the smaller the market share of the patents owned by large firms, the higher the chance that firms will list them on the market. In line with the revenue versus competition framework by Arora and Fosfuri (2003), this paper concludes that large firms are generally more concerned about the rent dissipation effect over the revenue effect from licensing, while the opposite is true for smaller firms.