Reframing Mergers And Acquisitions Around Stakeholder Relationships

Segal provides a dialectic understanding of stakeholder relationships around merger and acquisition (M&A) activity and challenges the view that it is static, linear, and predictable. Useful for academics and professionals, this book highlights the need to understand the economic, political and social processes involved around M&A.

Among the significant repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic is escalating public questioning of the desirability and sustainability of the market economy and the societal role of business. These concerns are linked to merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, with significant disruptive consequences for stakeholder relationships and their management. This book explores these changes, moving away from the traditional focus on the financial and strategic aspects of M&A and its rational, technocratic approach. Viewing M&A activity as economic, political, and social (EPS) processes, Segal provides a dialectic understanding of stakeholder relationships around M&A activity and challenges the view that M&A activity is static, linear, and predictable. He develops a conceptual framework to enable practitioners, researchers and policymakers to identify, understand and address the stakeholder and management implications of M&A activity. This is applied to four case studies that make explicit how complex stakeholder relationships play out around M&A and how these power dynamics were managed with different balances. Useful for academics, researchers, managers, advisors, investors, analysts, and other stakeholders, this book highlights the need to understand the EPS implications and processes involved around M&A.

Family Business and Management: Objectives, Theory, and Practice characterizes the specificity of the functioning of family businesses through the prism of their objectives. It contains both theoretical considerations about the essence of family entrepreneurship and the objectives set by family businesses, as well as the results of a survey conducted among family business managers. The study concerned the objectives of family businesses and made it possible to confront the planned objectives with those actually implemented by these entities. Thanks to this approach, it is possible to assess the effectiveness of management, taking into account both business and non-business (family) aspirations. The classification models created in the course of the analyzes additionally help to organize the population of family businesses and better understand its diversity. The book also shows the impact of succession plans on setting objectives, as well as the importance of the management styles used in the implementation of objectives set by family businesses. This book will be valuable to students at an advanced level, academics, and practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to management and organizational studies and will be of interest to organizational scholars, consultants, and leaders interested in establishing and realizing goals in family business.

Personal Branding in the Knowledge Economy: The Interrelationship between Corporate and Employee Brands aims to contribute to the academic debate about the marketization of individuals’ knowledge, creativity, and personal images, alongside a growing interest in the whole area of branding in the networked economy based on knowledge. Personal branding and personal knowledge are critical assets of knowledge workers and key drivers of their development and innovative performance. Both strongly influence the individual success of knowledge workers in the networked and knowledge-driven economy. Personal brands are dynamically shifting from the side-lines to the center of the modern economy and the authenticity of the brands of personal ingredients for their ability to create value. They are one of the three key pillars of value creation in the social media environment, therefore significantly contribute to digital business models. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, professionals, and students in the fields of organizational branding, marketing, management, and communications.

Original ideas start in a person ́s mind, but the environment where they operate is crucial for the capture and development of these ideas. Equally important is the interaction with others in developing and evaluating ideas, as a brilliant idea only influences the world if it is put into use. This book hopes to inspire the team leader, innovation manager or research group leader. It deals with the delicate balance of managing and controlling intellectual property in a collaborative environment. Insights on how new inventions can be evaluated are offered. Following the whole cycle of innovation from a creative idea to where a product or service can be put on the market, examples illustrate how an innovative environment can be created and maintained. Strategies and solutions based on the science of team development are presented and leadership models for the different phases of group development are provided. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, product developers, entrepreneurs, and advanced students in the fields of technology and innovation management and entrepreneurship and small business management but also for leadership.

Manufacturing companies need to adapt to the requirements of functioning in the era of Industry 4.0 and major technological disruptions. The use of knowledge-based decision support tools has also become necessary in order for enterprises to survive in a competitive environment. This book offers a new approach to designing the knowledge management process and integrating it with the implementation of Industry 4.0 technology. The book presents the methods used in a customer-oriented organization under the Management of Manufacturing Knowledge (M-Know Process). More specifically, methods for defining and collecting customer requirements are presented and methods on how to receive manufacturing knowledge, as well as how to formalise the acquired knowledge using key technologies of Industry 4.0, are discussed. The author also presents real case studies from western and central Europe and offers recommendations for the production manager. The instrumentation of methods and tools to support knowledge management, in the production of individualised products presented therein, will allow the manufacturing company to be transformed digitally, into a customer-oriented organisation operating in accordance with the assumptions of Industry 4.0. This book will be a valuable read for production researchers, academicians, PhD students and postgraduate level students of industrial engineering and industrial management. The practical case studies will also make the book a useful resource for managers of manufacturing enterprises.

This book is an introduction text to distress risk and corporate failure modelling techniques. It illustrates how to apply a wide range of corporate bankruptcy prediction models and, in turn, highlights their strengths and limitations under different circumstances. It also conceptualises the role and function of different classifiers in terms of a trade-off between model flexibility and interpretability. Jones's illustrations and applications are based on actual company failure data and samples. Its practical and lucid presentation of basic concepts covers various statistical learning approaches, including machine learning, which has come into prominence in recent years. The material covered will help readers better understand a broad range of statistical learning models, ranging from relatively simple techniques, such as linear discriminant analysis, to state-of-the-art machine learning methods, such as gradient boosting machines, adaptive boosting, random forests, and deep learning. The book’s comprehensive review and use of real-life data will make this a valuable, easy-to-read text for researchers, academics, institutions, and professionals who make use of distress risk and corporate failure forecasts.

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is dominated by major Western brands. The dominance of such major brands extends to burgeoning Asian markets. These conglomerates often rely on packaging as a strategic tool to entice Asian consumers. This book illustrates how packaging as a marketing tool is more than simply changing the label or translating the brand into vernacular language. It examines how different packaging elements (e.g. information, imagery, packaging type) can help to communicate product values to Asian consumers. Drawing upon rich knowledge of the Asian CPG markets with extensive findings from fieldworks in the key Asian markets, this book explains how Western brands are localising their packaging design in Asian markets. It provides invaluable insight into how major Western CPG brands have relied heavily on their packaging strategies to compete not only against domestic brands but also against other foreign brands. The book includes in-depth interviews with brand managers of several major Western CPG brands and retailers, and sheds light on emerging trends of CPG packaging in Asia.