Les implications financières pour les acheteurs dans les fusions et acquisitions (F & A) ont été un sujet de fascination pour les chercheurs et les praticiens pendant des décennies. Malgré des recherches académique et commerciales approfondies visant à déterminer si et comment les acquéreurs obtiennent des résultats financiers à court et à long terme à la suite des fusions et acquisitions, la clarté de notre compréhension de ces questions demeure difficile à déterminer. Cette thèse de doctorat cherche à apporter plus de clarté à ces questions en examinant les interactions complexes entre plusieurs aspects clés des fusions et acquisitions. Le chapitre 1 examine comment l’expérience des acquéreurs influe sur le rendement à long terme au moyen de décisions clés avant et après la transaction et comment cette influence indirecte diffère dans les contextes nationaux et transfrontaliers. Le chapitre 2 explore les configurations des caractéristiques des transactions et des acquéreurs ainsi que les mécanismes de gouvernance d’entreprise des acquéreurs correspondant aux rendements anormaux cumulés des acquéreurs positifs (CAR). Le chapitre 3 étudie les effets interactifs entre les institutions formelles des pays d’accueil, les caractéristiques des acquéreurs et les mécanismes de gouvernance d’entreprise de l’acquéreur CAR. Enfin, le chapitre 4 examine l’influence des reportages d’affaires sur l’acquéreur CAR. / Financial implications for buyers in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have been a topic of fascination with academics and practitioners for decades. Despite extensive business research dedicated toward investigating whether and how acquirers perform financially in the short and long terms following M&A, so far, the clarity of our understanding about these issues remains elusive. This doctoral thesis seeks to bring more clarity to these questions by examining complex interactions among several key aspects of M&A. Chapter 1 investigates how acquirer experience influences long-term performance through key pre- and post-transaction decisions and how such indirect influence differs in domestic and cross-border contexts. Chapter 2 explores the configurations of deal and acquirer characteristics as well as acquirer corporate governance mechanisms corresponding to positive acquirer cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). Chapter 3 investigates the interactive effects among host countries’ formal institutions, acquirer characteristics and corporate governance mechanisms on acquirer CAR. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the influence of business news reports on acquirer CAR.

Por que mesmo entre os países com condições econômicas semelhantes o nível de desenvolvimento financeiro é tão diferente? Diversas variáveis políticas e institucionais já foram ressaltadas pela literatura, no entanto desconectadas uma das outras. Esse artigo visa contribuir para a questão fornecendo um modelo que analise as principais variáveis de forma concomitante, tornando endógena a interação entre elas. Para tanto, selecionamos uma amostra de países de renda média alta que compartilham de outras variáveis econômicas centrais e utilizamos o QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), como método de análise. O estudo conclui que a estabilidade política é a única condição necessária, porém não suficiente. Entre aqueles países estáveis politicamente foi necessário mais um de dois atributos: um alto grau de proteção aos investidores minoritários ou, surpreendentemente, um regime político autocrático. / Why even among countries with similar economic conditions the financial development level is so different? Several political and institutional variables have already been highlighted in the literature, however disconnected from each other. This article aims to contribute to the issue by providing a model to analyze the main variables simultaneously, making endogenous the interaction between them. To achieve this, we selected a sample of middle-income countries who share other core economic variables and use the QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) as the analysis method. The study concludes that political stability is the only necessary condition, but still not sufficient. Those politically stable countries need another one of attributes: a high degree of protection to minority investors or, surprisingly, an autocratic political regime.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2017-06-28T17:05:19Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Paula Maines da Silva_.pdf: 2013358 bytes, checksum: 6acd0d4a4b15ddd24dff6732d3312d74 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-28T17:05:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paula Maines da Silva_.pdf: 2013358 bytes, checksum: 6acd0d4a4b15ddd24dff6732d3312d74 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-30 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O pluralismo relacional ocorre quando empresas derivam o seu significado e suas ações a partir das relações com vários tipos de entidades. Nesse sentido, as pequenas empresas que atuam de forma conjunta, por meio de redes, podem ser influenciadas pelas múltiplas relações no desenvolvimento de estratégias coletivas de responsabilidade social corporativa (RSC), buscando, assim, sanar problemas socioambientais em seu entorno. Dessa maneira, o presente trabalho teve como objetivo geral compreender como o pluralismo relacional influenciava pequenas empresas em suas estratégias coletivas de responsabilidade social corporativa. O estudo focou em pequenas empresas do setor hoteleiro que eram associadas de uma rede. Em relação aos aspectos metodológicos, esta pesquisa teve caráter qualitativo e combinou o uso da análise qualitativa comparativa (QCA) e análise do discurso. Como resultados de pesquisa, concluiu-se que o pluralismo relacional influencia pequenas empresas em suas estratégias coletivas de responsabilidade social corporativa. Esse fato se instala em razão do relacionamento com distintos atores que se detectam dentro da rede, entre todos os associados e também com os que se encontram fora da rede, como Sindicatos de Hotéis, Bares e Restaurantes, entre outros. Outro resultado encontrado refere-se ao fato de que o pluralismo relacional da rede mais a intensidade da relação ou o pluralismo relacional da rede mais a longevidade da relação são potenciais influenciadores das estratégias coletivas da responsabilidade social corporativa. Além da contribuição central, focada no fato de que o pluralismo relacional influencia as estratégias coletivas de pequenas empresas, a tese possibilitou apresentar os aspectos que podem exercer essa influência nas estratégias de RSC das pequenas empresas, que compreendem o pluralismo relacional com diferentes stakeholders, os diferentes tipos de pluralismo relacional, intensidade da relação com os stakeholders e a longevidade da relação com os stakeholders. / The relational pluralism occurs when enterprises derive their meaning and actions from the relationships with various types of entities. In this sense, small companies that work together through networks can be influenced by the multiple relationships in oder to develop of collective strategies of corporate social responsibility (CSR), seeking to solve social and environmental problems in their environment. This way, the present work carried out a review on national and international studies on sustainability, corporate social responsibility, collective strategies, networks and relational pluralism. Then, theoretical relations were established that allowed to test hypotheses whose variables emanated from the literature. Therefore, the general objective of this research was to understand how relational pluralism influenced small companies in their collective strategies of corporate social responsibility. The study focused on small enterprises in the hospitality industry that were associated with a network. Regarding methodological aspects, this research had a qualitative character and combined the use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and discourse analysis. As research results, it was concluded that relational pluralism influences small companies in their collective strategies of corporate social responsibility. This is due to the relationship with different actors that are detected within the network, among all associates and also with those outside the network, such as hotel, restaurant and restaurant unions, among others. Another finding is that network relational pluralism plus network intensity or network relational pluralism plus relationship longevity are potential influencers of collective corporate social responsibility strategies. In addition to the central contribution, focused on the fact that relational pluralism influences the collective strategies of small companies, the thesis made it possible to present the aspects that can exert this influence in the CSR strategies of small companies, which include relational pluralism with different stakeholders, Different types of relational pluralism, intensity of the relationship with stakeholders and longevity of the relationship with stakeholders.

Por que mesmo entre os países com condições econômicas semelhantes o nível de desenvolvimento financeiro é tão diferente? Diversas variáveis políticas e institucionais já foram ressaltadas pela literatura, no entanto desconectadas uma das outras. Esse artigo visa contribuir para a questão fornecendo um modelo que analise as principais variáveis de forma concomitante, tornando endógena a interação entre elas. Para tanto, selecionamos uma amostra de países de renda média alta que compartilham de outras variáveis econômicas centrais e utilizamos o QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), como método de análise. O estudo conclui que a estabilidade política é a única condição necessária, porém não suficiente. Entre aqueles países estáveis politicamente foi necessário mais um de dois atributos: um alto grau de proteção aos investidores minoritários ou, surpreendentemente, um regime político autocrático. / Why even among countries with similar economic conditions the financial development level is so different? Several political and institutional variables have already been highlighted in the literature, however disconnected from each other. This article aims to contribute to the issue by providing a model to analyze the main variables simultaneously, making endogenous the interaction between them. To achieve this, we selected a sample of middle-income countries who share other core economic variables and use the QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) as the analysis method. The study concludes that political stability is the only necessary condition, but still not sufficient. Those politically stable countries need another one of attributes: a high degree of protection to minority investors or, surprisingly, an autocratic political regime.

Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is currently being investigated as an alternative to CMOS technology. There has been extensive study on a wide range of circuits from simple logical circuits such as adders to complex circuits such as 4-bit processors. At the same time, little if any work has been done in considering the possibility of reconfiguration to reduce power in QCA devices. This work presents one of the first such efforts when considering reconfigurable QCA architectures which are expected to be both robust and power efficient. We present a new reconfiguration scheme which is highly robust and is expected to dissipate less power with respect to conventional designs. An adder design based on the reconfiguration scheme will be presented in this thesis, with a detailed power analysis and comparison with existing designs. In order to overcome the problems of routing which comes with reconfigurability, a new wire crossing mechanism is also presented as part of this thesis.

The increasing need for low power and stunningly fast devices in Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Very large Scale Integration (CMOS VLSI) circuits, directs the stream towards scaling of the same. However scaling at sub-micro level and nano level pose quantum mechanical effects and thereby limits further scaling of CMOS circuits. Researchers look into new aspects in nano regime that could effectively resolve this quandary. One such technology that looks promising at nano-level is the quantum dot cellular automata (QCA). The basic operation of QCA is based on transfer of charge rather than the electrons itself. The wave nature of these electrons and their uncertainty in device operation demands a probabilistic approach to study their operation. The data is assigned to a QCA cell by positioning two electrons into four quantum dots. However the site in which the electrons settles is uncertain and depends on various factors. In an ideal state, the electrons position themselves diagonal to each other, through columbic repulsion, to a low energy state. The quantum cell is said to be polarized to +1 or -1, based on the alignment of the electrons. In this thesis, we put forth a probabilistic model to design sequential QCA in Bayesian networks. The timing constraints inherent in sequential circuits due to the feedback path, makes it difficult to assign clock zones in a way that the outputs arrive at the same time instant. Hence designing circuits that have many sequential elements is time consuming. The model presented in this paper is fast and could be used to design sequential QCA circuits without the need to align the clock zones. One of the major advantages of our model lies in its ability to accurately capture the polarization of each cell of the sequential QCA circuits. We discuss the architecture of some of the basic sequential circuits such as J-K flip flop (FF), RAM memory cell and s27 benchmark circuit designed in QCADesigner. We analyze the circuits using a state-of-art Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN). To our knowledge this is the first time sequential circuits are analyzed using DBN. For the first time, Estimated Posterior Importance Sampling Algorithm (EPIS) is used to determine the probabilistic values, to study the effect due to variations in physical dimension and operating temperature on output polarization in QCA circuits.

As CMOS scaling faces a technological barrier in the near future, novel design paradigms are being proposed to keep up with the ever growing need for computation power and speed. Most of these novel technologies have device sizes comparable to atomic and molecular scales. At these levels the quantum mechanical effects play a dominant role in device performance, thus inducing uncertainty. The wave nature of particle matter and the uncertainty associated with device operation make a case for probabilistic modeling of the device. As the dimensions go down to a molecular scale, functioning of a nano-device will be governed primarily by the atomic level device physics. Modeling a device at such a small scale will require taking into account the quantum mechanical phenomenon inherent to the device. In this dissertation, we studied one such nano-device: Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (QCA). We used probabilistic modeling to perform a fast approximation based method to estimate error, power and reliability in large QCA circuits. First, we associate the quantum mechanical probabilities associated with each QCA cell to design and build a probabilistic Bayesian network. Our proposed modeling is derived from density matrix-based quantum modeling, and it takes into account dependency patterns induced by clocking. Our modeling scheme is orders of magnitude faster than the coherent vector simulation method that uses quantum mechanical simulations. Furthermore, our output node polarization values match those obtained from the state of the art simulations. Second, we use this model to approximate power dissipated in a QCA circuit during a non-adiabatic switching event and also to isolate the thermal hotspots in a design. Third, we also use a hierarchical probabilistic macromodeling scheme to model QCA designs at circuit level to isolate weak spots early in the design process. It can also be used to compare two functionally equivalent logic designs without performing the expensive quantum mechanical simulations. Finally, we perform optimization studies on different QCA layouts by analyzing the designs for error and power over a range of kink energies.To the best of our knowledge the non-adiabatic power model presented in this dissertation is the first work that uses abrupt clocking scheme to estimate realistic power dissipation. All prior works used quasi-adiabatic power dissipation models. The hierarchical macromodel design is also the first work in QCA design that uses circuit level modeling and is faithful to the underlying layout level design. The effect of kink energy to study power-error tradeoffs will be of great use to circuit designers and fabrication scientists in choosing the most suitable design parameters such as cell size and grid spacing.

This thesis is based on promising computing paradigm of reversible logic which generates unique outputs out of the inputs and. Reversible logic circuits maintain one-to-one mapping inside of the inputs and the outputs. Compared to the traditional irreversible computation, reversible logic circuit has the advantage that it successfully avoids the information loss during computations. Also, reversible logic is useful to design ultra-low-power nanocomputing circuits, circuits for quantum computing, and the nanocircuits that are testable in nature. Reversible computing circuits require the ancilla inputs and the garbage outputs. Ancilla input is the constant input in reversible circuits. Garbage output is the output for maintaining the reversibility of the reversible logic but is not any of the primary inputs nor a useful bit. An efficient reversible circuit will have the minimal number of garbage and ancilla bits. Barrel shifter is one of main computing systems having applications in high speed digital signal processing, oating-point arithmetic, FPGA, and Center Processing Unit (CPU). It can operate the function of shifting or rotation for multiple bits in only one clock cycle. The goal of this thesis is to design barrel shifters based on the reversible computing that are optimized in terms of the number of ancilla and garbage bits. In order to achieve this goal, a new Super Conservative Reversible Logic Gate (SCRL gate) has been used. The SCRL gate has 1 control input depending on the value of which it can swap any two n-1 data inputs. We proved that the SCRL gate is superior to the existing conservative reversible Fredkin gate. This thesis develops 5 design methodologies for reversible barrel shifters using SCRL gates that are primarily optimized with the criteria of the number of ancilla and garbage bits. The five proposed methodologies consist of reversible right rotator, reversible logical right shifter, reversible arithmetic right shifter, reversible universal right shifter and reversible universal bidirectional shifter. The proposed reversible barrel shifter design is compared with the existing works in literature and have shown improvement ranging from 8.5% to 92% by the number of garbage and ancilla bits. The SCRL gate and design methodologies of reversible barrel shifter are mapped in Quantum Dot Cellular Automata (QCA) computing. It is illustrated that the SCRL-based designs of reversible barrel shifters have less QCA cost (cost in terms of number of inverters and majority voters) compared to the Fredkin gate- based designs of reversible barrel shifters.

The aim of this paper is to examine the ideational leadership of the European Unions' executive institution, the European Commission, by studying its legislative response to the surge in irregular migration to the European Union in 2015 and 2016. In order to assess which form of ideational leadership the Commission expresses, key ideas, rooted in either liberalism or realism, were extracted from the selected documents with the help of an analytical tool, created for a deductive qualitative content analysis based on Watt Boolsens' seven step model. Ten legislative documents proposed by the Commission, deemed relevant to its response to irregular migration, ranging from the period May 2015 to June 2016, were selected. Meaningful entities of these documents were coded and designated a subcategory belonging to key ideas of either liberal or realist nature. These subcategories originate from the main categories: State & Individuals, Humanism & Rights, Borders & Security, and lastly International actors & Cooperation. This paper is thereby able to demonstrate which ideas prevail in the Commissions' legislative response to failures in policy during a time of crisis. The results indicate that the Commission expresses ideas predominantly rooted in realism, such as cooperation when deemed beneficial to the...

The thesis focuses on European countries which underwent so-called partial democratization in the last quarter of the 20th century. It starts from the polemic with Mansfield and Snyder who claim that a (partial) democratization leads to war. The development in Europe of the last quarter of the 20th century, however, seems to contradict this notion. The aim of the thesis is, thus, to contribute to the debate of war-proneness of democratizing states by answering the following question: What caused that the democratization did not lead to war in many cases? Due to the nature of the research question as well as to the number of cases (i.e. 20) the method applied here is qualitative comparative analysis using the so-called fuzzy set method. The application of this method as such is a secondary aim of the thesis. Possible causal conditions of the absence of war which are under study here also derive mostly from the conclusions made by Mansfield and Snyder. The main focus is put on the so-called golden parachute. Among other causes are strong institutions - conceptualized here as weak and weakened executive, political integration into international community, duration of independent statehood and at least some experience with democracy - and developed economy - conceptualized through GDP, economic...