This study investigates what culturally related responsibilities leaders in innovative SMEs have when preparing employees prior to M&As in order to mitigate drawbacks due to culturally related discrepancies. The findings of this study especially confirm previous studies on culturally related difficulties in change management by emphasising the significant meaning of evaluating soft factors prior to change. The study was conducted by examining an innovative SME in the telecom industry that during 2009 embarked upon a major amendment of business by restructuring the company set up and relocate its headquarters to Singapore. The analysis is based on both existent studies in the field of organisational culture and change management, as well as on material obtained from qualitative research. This research consisted primarily of unstructured interviews and active participation is various company events and initiatives.  The subject is of great importance as M&As are an increasingly common feature of innovative companies' strategies in order to gain access to important knowledge and technologies. However, a great number of these initiatives fail, usually due to leaders inability to evaluate future prospects in relation to soft factors. The findings provide an in depth understanding of leaders significance prior to, and during change, in order to create cultural stability and predictability as a means of mitigating employee anxiety and ultimately reluctance to change.

Deux problématiques ont été peu explorées dans la littérature économique et managériale:
 - les méthodes d’évaluation des opportunités d’entrée et d’investissement par un opérateur télécom international, - le cas du continent africain comme destination de ces investissements, qui fait l’objet de beaucoup d’intérêt de la part des grands opérateurs internationaux.
 La thèse porte sur les investissements étrangers en Afrique dans le secteur des télécoms, en s’intéressant à deux modes d’entrée : l’acquisition d’une licence et le rachat d’un opérateur installé. Son objectif est de montrer dans quelle mesure les facteurs locaux, liés au pays d’accueil de l’investissement et à son marché télécom local, ont un impact sur la valorisation de ces investissements en Afrique sub-Saharienne. La thèse couvre la question de l’intérêt stratégique de ces investissements, les méthodes pour estimer ces opportunités, ainsi que la nature des différents facteurs à considérer dans cette estimation.
 Une base de données a été développée, rassemblant les transactions effectuées par les principaux opérateurs multinationaux en Afrique sub-Saharienne sur la période 2000-2010.
Plusieurs analyses quantitatives ont été menées à partir de cette base de données, afin d’identifier les déterminants des prix de ces transactions. La thèse montre le manque de régularités et de rationalité dans les prix des transactions du secteur télécom sur le continent. / There is still scant knowledge in the economic and international business literature regarding two issues: - Valuation methods of modes of market entry and of investment by an international telecom operator, - The case of Africa as a host continent for these investments. The thesis deals with foreign investments in Africa in the telecom sector, focusing on two entry modes: license awards and acquisitions of local operators. Its objective is to demonstrate on what extent « local » factors (related to the host country and its local telecom market) have an impact on the valuation of these investments in sub-Saharan Africa. This work covers the issues of the strategic interest of these investments, the methods to valuate these investment opportunities, as well as the different factors to take into account in this valuation. A database has been developed, gathering all deals made by multinational operators in sub-Saharan Africa over 2000-2010. Several quantitative analyses have been conducted as from this corpus, in order to identify the determinants of deal amounts. This work demonstrates the lack of regularity and rationality in deals’ prices of the telecom sector in Africa.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a widely used strategy, however, the failure rate is high, and especially in the acquired firm, acquisitions often result in higher turnover rates. There is a lack of understanding of psychological processes causing employee turnover. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of employees’ psychological processes that determine employee retention following an acquisition, which will be achieved by studying the relationship between perceived psychological ownership and employee retention from the perspective of employees at the acquired firm. Nine interviews were conducted with employees at two acquired firms, one finance firm and one IT consultancy firm. Using a conceptual model, employees’ psychological processes are analyzed. The data illustrates that psychological ownership, commitment, and involvement decreased due to loss of control and changed feelings towards the organizations. In conclusion, it was found that there was a loss in psychological ownership for most respondents, which further decreased their commitment and involvement, leading to their resignation. The respondents who chose to stay indicated higher psychological ownership and higher commitment. The findings support the conceptual model and contribute to more understanding of employees' psychological processes in acquisitions.

<p>   </p> <p>M&A activity is significant in today’s economy, as well as the need for M&A deals to be successful. Human resourcing is a necessary component in executing M&A deals and without it, anticipated growth through expected synergies cannot be achieved. What was particularly sparse in the extant literature of human resources support for M&A was the research into developing a function supporting M&A activities. The purpose of this research was to gather data of previously completed M&A deals at a business to examine if a correlation exists between the available M&A deal data and the number of human resources that were hired for integration. This study used existing data from previous M&A deals to develop a model for predicting the ideal number of human resources required to complete integration activities for future M&A deals. In a case wise diagnostic of the resulting model, 28 of the 31 previous M&A deals were correctly predicted by the model for the needed number of contractors. These findings answered the research question posed by this study, and these resulted in the creation of a multiple regression model with statistically significant coefficients for future M&A deals. A process model was developed and may be useful for businesses, by providing a methodology to leverage its own historical data to predict human resource needs during M&A integrations. This study provided businesses pursuing M&A a quantitative process for intentional planning to ensure that there are dedicated human resources to support the business strategy and outcomes. </p> <p>  </p>

<p> Energy storage has received much attention due to the increasing use of energy, especially renewable energy. Lithium-ion batteries have great characteristics for electrical energy storage. Higher specific energy density, cycle life, cell voltage, shorter charge times gives lithium-ion batteries favorable energy storage characteristics over other battery chemistries. Although lithium-ion batteries are increasing in use for electrical energy storage, their safety still poses an engineering problem. When lithium-ion batteries are abused, they can enter thermal runaway. This event is dangerous as it can eject hot gases and shrapnel. Previous studies focused on different aspects of thermal runaway, for example, heat generation from chemical reactions, propagation to other cells, and the physics of gas venting. One phenomenon that has not received much attention is the evaporation of the electrolyte out of a failed lithium-ion battery. Understanding the effect of electrolyte evaporation is key to having a more complete understanding of thermal runaway. In this thesis, the physics of electrolyte evaporation is studied with the purpose of developing more accurate thermal abuse models. An evaporation model was developed, based on porous drying theory and a 1-D liquid diffusion process. Experiments were conducted to identify the liquid diffusion coefficient which governs the rate of electrolyte transport within the porous separator within the battery. The 1-D liquid diffusion model was then implemented into an existing thermal abuse model and exercised for a typical oven test scenario. Results showed that the physics-based evaporation model resulted in excellent agreement with experimental data at different oven temperatures.</p>

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京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第25074号 / 経博第681号 / 新制||経||305(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 渡邊 純子, 教授 黒澤 隆文, 教授 田中 彰 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Agricultural Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

The perennial controversy in business combinations accounting and its dialectic with stakeholders’ interests under the complexity of the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) activity is the centrepiece of analysis in this thesis. It is argued here that the accounting regulation should be as neutral as possible for the economic activity, although it is recognised that accounting changes may result in economic effects. In the case of the changes for business combinations accounting in the USA, lobbying was so fierce that in order to achieve the abolition of accounting choice in M&A accounting, it forced the standard-setter to compromise and to change substantially some of its earlier proposals. Such fierce lobbying cast doubts about whether it was effectively possible to mitigate such economic effects, resulting in a possible impact of the accounting changes on the M&A activity. The occurrence of M&A in waves is yet to be fully theorised. Nevertheless, existing literature established relationships between M&A activity and some key economic and financial factors, and has provided several interesting theories and other meaningful contributions for this thesis. It was therefore possible to examine whether the changes in the accounting rules produced any significant impact on the M&A activity. The findings obtained from the testing of the research hypotheses suggest that the new M&A accounting rules did not result in significant impacts on overall M&A activity. Nevertheless, from the study of managers’ perceptions, and from the examination of annual reports of S&P 500 companies, a considerable impact on the financial reporting was found.