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.

The contribution of small firms towards the creation of economic value in a country’s Gross Domestic Product, employment and innovation is widely acknowledged. Relatively little is known on how small firms are adopting IT strategically to acheive business-IT alignment and how alignment changes over time. This study examines from a dynamic perspective IT adoption actions undertaken by owner-managers, in relation to business-IT alignment in small firms in the island state of Malta. To attain its research objectives, the methodological stance adopted in this research study is that of grounded theory. Moving away from a deductive approach, this study embraces a constructivist approach using a combination of inductive and abductive thought. No fewer than thirty-one in-depth interviews are conducted with owner-managers to observe alignment patterns of IT adoption behaviour in their respective small firms operating in Malta and employing up to 49 employees. Four business-IT alignment equilibrium states are identified, serving as markers to map out the common IT alignment paths that each firm pursued, not necessarily in linear form, during their operational years. A substantive model, which identifies four distinct IT alignment patterns, denotes each common path that a group of firms took in their movement from one alignment equilibrium state to another, throughout their life-cycle stages. This study has substantive application and comprises several implications for the development of IT adoption behaviour when small firms endeavour to strategically align business with IT. It provides policy-makers, academic researchers and small firms’ owner-managers with a theoretical framework that can provide them with factors that can predict the kind of alignment patterns that are likely to occur. Findings indicate that the quality of IT related technological solutions that are taken up by each small firm are reliant on the owner-manager’s characteristics that focus mainly on the knowledge of internal IT expertise and the project management capabilities to manage IT outsourcers. Given that few studies have been conducted to study and establish patterns of IT alignment in small firms, this research provides an important contribution to knowledge and to the existing academic literature.

This paper covers the issue of alternative theories of the firm. The theoretical part is separated into two chapters and their goal is to acquaint readers with this topic of microeconomics. On the base of described models will be explained ambiguous approach to theme. After this, follows the explanation of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This chapter contains conceptual bases and model of CSR, which reference to the main theme of the paper - alternative theories of the firm and help to answer the question: Can Corporate Social Responsibility be concerned as a theory of firm? The next chapter describes the concept of CSR at the examples of CSR projects in Marks & Spencer company.