The objective of this study is to shed light on the added value of the advisors in SME mergers or acquisitions: accountants, business brokers, tax consultants and lawyers. Theory is inconclusive on the added value of advisory services and research is rare. RBV predicts direct advantages for using advisory services in M&A: fewer obstacles during and directly after M&A and lagged beneficial effects involving more renewal in the firm. The theory of structural holes, agency theory and management entrenchment theory, on the other hand, predict neutral or negative effects from advisory services in M&A. The dataset includes 855 SME mergers and acquisitions in three countries, where the acquirer and target firm did not belong to the same family. Using binary logistic regressions the results show consistently that the M&A advisory services do not reduce the occurrence of obstacles in M&A, but for the positive impact of tax consultants on financial shortfalls and misinformation. However more renewal in the two years after acquisition can be observed when several advisors are involved, particularly so lawyers and bankers. The outcomes suggest that not one theory is able to predict both the immediate and lagged effects of advisory services. The theory of structural holes/agency/entrenchment predicts immediate effects best, while RBV predicts lagged effects best. The database and research design have some limitations. More fine grained hypotheses and measurements are recommended for future research.
The Dutch greenhouse horticulture industry is characterized by world leadership in high-tech innovation. The dynamics of this playing field are innovation in production systems and automation, reduction in energy consumption and sharing limited space. However, international competitive advantage of the industry is under pressure and sustainable growth of individual enterprises is no longer a certainty. The sector's ambition is to innovate better and grow faster than the competition in the rest of the world. Realizing this ambition requires strengthening the knowledge base, stimulating entrepreneurship, innovation (not just technological, but especially business process innovation). It also requires educating and professionalizing people. However, knowledge transfer in this industry is often fragmented and innovation through horizontal and vertical collaboration throughout the value chain is limited. This paper focuses on the question: how can the grower and the supplier in the greenhouse horticulture chain gain competitive advantage through radical product and process innovation. The challenge lies in time- to-market, in customer relationship, in developing new product/market combinations and in innovative entrepreneurship. In this paper an innovation and entrepreneurial educational and research programme is introduced. The programme aims at strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration between enterprise, education and research. Using best practice examples, the paper illustrates how companies can realize growth and improve the innovative capacity of the organization as well as the individual by linking economic and social sustainability. The paper continues to show how participants of the program develop competencies by means of going through a learning cycle of single-loop, double-loop and triple loop learning: reduction of mistakes, change towards new concepts and improvement of the ability to learn. Finally, the paper illustrates the importance of combining enterprise, education and research in regional networks, with examples from the greenhouse horticulture sector. These networks generate economic growth and international competitiveness by acting as business accelerators.
This paper develops propositions on the added value of normatively-based, employee-oriented corporate social responsibility, specifically on the issue whether an individual owner-manager can add value within a foreign subsidiary by means of normatively-based, employee-oriented CSR. We suggest that this emerging research area sheds light on managerial discretion within a foreign environment and on the question if globalisation of business, based on economic rationality, inevitably leads to a race to the bottom or that normative resources - the view of owner-managers on the role of employees within their company - add value as well.Based on five case studies, this study develops propositions about the impact of international employee oriented CSR policies on mutual value creation within multinational SMEs. We detect conditions under which employee-oriented CSR adds value, what the influence is of the host country institutional environment and suggest differences across sectors and investment motives. The results suggest that not only motives but also the skills of the owner/manager as an institutional entrepreneur are critical in dealing with institutional variance.Conference paper bij het: 1st Interdisciplinary Conference on Stakeholders, Resources and Value Creation, Barcelona, 7-8 juni 2011
