Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are major strategic initiatives undertaken by many organisations. Within the construction context, these have been used, amongst others, to accelerate growth, reduce the effects of the construction cycle, enter into new markets, and spread risk. During the last decade, M&A were recognised as the preferred vehicle for expansion into the global construction market. Major European and international construction organisations use mergers or acquisitions to increase their geographical coverage and business portfolio. Mergers and Acquisitions impact on a number of organisational dimensions ranging from `soft' issues such as organisational culture to `hard' issues such as IT integration. Four specific aspects of mergers and acquisitions are investigated within this thesis. These are as follows: Strategy, Business Portfolio and Performance Measurement of construction organisations and the impact of M&A on subsequent performance; the Acquisition Strategy adopted for entering emerging markets such as Central and Eastern Europe; the Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on construction companies' Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT); and an Investigation of Knowledge Management Strategies for organisations that have undergone mergers and acquisitions. The thesis adopts a qualitative research methodology. An extensive literature review was conducted on mergers and acquisitions with particular emphasis on its use within the construction sector. The literature review provided a sound basis for theory development and identified areas in which further understanding was requiired. A multiple case study approach was selected for each of the four aspects studied and the data was obtained using semi-structured interviews. Based on the case study data, analysis and discussion were conducted resulting in conclusions for each of the four aspects investigated. The research concluded that Mergers and Acquisitions were an important vehicle for construction organisations to achieve growth, and expand geographically into new markets and new sectors. However,. the implications of mergers and acquisitions need to be understood and the processes . before, during and after the merger or acquisition is finalised need to be carefully planned and communicated to the relevant parties. Mergers and Acquisitions'- can offer' tremendous advantage to an organisation and several recommendations are made regarditig how the process may be improved within the construction context.

The aim of my diploma thesis is to analyze the current situation of Panelárna St. Město, joint-stock company on construction market, and to suggest measures that can be used as a basis for top management decisions regarding future operations. To achieve the objective, internal and external analysis methods were used. Methods of external analysis included PEST analysis and Porter's five forces analysis. Internal analysis was made by using financial analysis, analysis of resources and analysis of the activities. Results of internal analysis are expressing opinion to tangible assets, intangible assets, human resources and financial resources, in addition to evaluating the tie between activities and total economical stability of the company. Information from external analysis served for assesing current and future progress of construction, intensity of competition, and for identifying factors that may become a source of opportunity and threats. Set suggestions and recomendations for future strategy will emerge from the synthesis of internal and external analysis.

We study games where a team of agents needs to collaborate against an adversary to achieve a common goal. The agents make their moves simultaneously, and they have different perceptions about the system state after each move, due to different sensing capabilities. Each agent can only act based on its own experiences, since no communication is assumed during the game. However, before the game begins, the agents can agree on some strategy. A strategy is winning if it guarantees that the agents achieve their goal regardless of how the opponent acts. Identifying a winning strategy, or determining that none exists, is known as the strategy synthesis problem. In this thesis, we only consider a simple objective where the agents must force the game into a given state. Much of the literature is focused on strategies that either rely on that the agents (a) can remember everything that they have perceived or (b) can only remember the last thing that they have perceived. The strategy synthesis problem is (in the general case) undecidable in (a) and has exponential running time in (b). We are interested in the middle, where agents can have finite memory. Specifically, they should be able to keep a finite-state machine, which they update when they make new observations. In our case, the internal state of each agent represents its knowledge about the state of affairs. In other words, an agent is able to update its knowledge, and act based on it. We propose an algorithm for constructing the finite-state machine for each agent, and assigning actions to the internal states before the game begins. Not every winning strategy can be found by the algorithm, but we are convinced that the ones found are valid ones. An important building block for the algorithm is the knowledge-based subset construction (KBSC) used in the literature, which we generalise to games with multiple agents. With our construction, the game can be reduced to another game, still with uncertain state information, but with less or equal uncertainty. The construction can be applied arbitrarily many times, but it appears as if it stabilises (so that no new knowledge is gained) after only a few steps. We discuss this and other interesting properties of our algorithm in the final chapters of this thesis. / Vi studerar spel där ett lag agenter behöver samarbeta mot en motståndare för att uppnå ett mål. Agenterna agerar samtidigt, och vid varje steg av spelet så har de olika uppfattning om spelets tillstånd. De antas inte kunna kommunicera under spelets gång, så agenterna kan bara agera utifrån sina egna erfarenheter. Innan spelet börjar kan agenterna dock komma överrens om en strategi. En sådan strategi är vinnande om den garanterar att agenterna når sitt mål oavsett hur motståndaren beter sig. Att hitta en vinnande strategi är känt som syntesproblemet. I den här avhandlingen behandlar vi endast ett enkelt mål där agenterna måste tvinga in spelet i ett givet tillstånd. Mycket av litteraturen handlar om strategier där agenterna antingen antas (a) kunna minnas allt som de upplevt eller (b) bara kunna minnas det senaste de upplevt. Syntesproblemet är (i det generella fallet) oavgörbart i (a) och tar exponentiell tid i (b). Vi är intressede av fallet där agenter kan ha ändligt minne. De ska kunna ha en ändlig automat, som de kan uppdatera när de får nya observationer. I vårt fall så representerar det interna tillståndet agentens kunskap om spelets tillstånd. En agent kan då uppdatera sin kunskap och agera utifrån den. Vi föreslår en algoritm som konstruerar en ändlig automat åt varje agent, samt instruktioner för vad agenten ska göra i varje internt tillstånd. Varje vinnande strategi kan inte hittas av algoritmen, men vi är övertygade om att de som hittas är giltiga. En viktig byggsten är den kunskapsbaserade delmängskonstruktionen (KBSC), som vi generaliserar till spel med flera agenter. Med vår konstruktion kan spelet reduceras till ett annat spel som har mindre eller lika mycket osäkerhet. Detta kan göras godtyckligt många gånger, men det verkar som om att ingen ny kunskap tillkommer efter bara några gånger. Vi diskuterar detta vidare tillsammans med andra intressanta egenskaper hos algoritmen i de sista kapitlen i avhandlingen.