Understanding the Relationship between Divestitures and Innovation

Working Papers

Few studies have examined the impact of divestitures on the innovation performance of firms. In particular, little attention has been paid into how the divestiture of firms’ non-core businesses could influence the innovation outcomes of their core businesses. Read More

Internal agglomeration and productivity: Evidence from microdata

Published Research

Evan Rawley, Associate Professor of Management, University of Connecticut, and Robert Seamans, Stern School of Business, NYU Abstract: We study how internal agglomeration—geographic clustering of business establishments owned by the same parent company—influences establishment productivity. Using Census microdata on the population of U.S. hotels from 1987-2007, we find that doubling theRead More

Borrow and Buy: Complementarity and Substitutability of Acquirer’s Alliances and Technology Acquisitions

Working Papers

I aim to contribute to corporate strategy and technology and innovation management literatures by refining the way we think about how firms’ externally accessible resources and capabilities influence those firms’ heterogeneous boundary choices and their resulting outcomes. Read More

Converting Strategic Ambiguity to Competitive Advantage: How Philips Lighting Solved the Challenge of LED Technology Disruption

Published Research

George Day, Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor Emeritus, The Wharton School, Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Q2 Technologies LLC, and Govi Rao, Phase Change Solutions Strategy & Leadership, 2020 The case of Philips Lighting shows how management coped with the ambiguous but real threats and opportunities of a highly disruptive emerging technologyRead More

Risk Factors That Matter: Textual Analysis of Risk Disclosures for the Cross-Section of Returns

Working Papers

I exploit unsupervised machine learning and natural language processing techniques to elicit the risk factors that firms themselves identify in their annual reports. I quantify the firms’ exposure to each identified risk, design an econometric test to classify them as either systematic or idiosyncratic, and construct factor mimicking portfolios that proxy for each undiversifiable source of risk.Read More

Determinants of Organizational Vigilance: Leadership, Foresight, and Adaptation in Three Sectors

Published Research

Why are vigilant organizations better at developing foresight than their rivals and acting faster on the insights and alerts? Four attributes were hypothesized to explain the difference between vigilant and vulnerable organizations.Read More

Family Firms and the Stock Market Performance of Acquisitions and Divestitures

Published Research

In this project, I seek to compare how effectively family firms undertake and implement acquisitions and divestitures relative to their non-family counterparts. While family firms are less likely than non-family firms to undertake divestitures, the stock market returns earned by the family firms that undertake these deals exceed those of non-family firms.Read More

Make Room! Make Room! A Note on Sequential Spinoffs and Acquisitions

Published Research

In this study, we identify a novel pattern of deal-making activity—spinoffs followed by acquisitions—that has yet to be analyzed in the corporate strategy literature. We present a set of descriptive results showing that firms undertake spinoffs followed by acquisitions at a rate that is too high to be attributable to random chance.Read More

Corporate Spin-Offs and Capital Allocation Decisions

Published Research

This paper investigates how spin-offs affect capital allocation decisions in diversified firms. The sensitivity of capital expenditures to investment opportunities, representing the efficiency of capital allocation decisions, improves when firms undertake spin-offs.Read More

Replicating the Multinationality-Performance Relationship: Is There an S-Curve?

Published Research

Our study examines the relationship between a firm’s multinationality and its performance. In a much-cited study, Lu and Beamish (2004) found evidence of an S-shaped relationship—with firm performance first decreasing, then increasing, then decreasing again as firms internationalized—in a sample of Japanese firms from 1986 to 1997.Read More

The Evolution of Alliance Portfolios: The Case of Unisys

Published Research

How do alliance portfolios evolve? We develop grounded theory based on Unisys’ case, which reveals how exogenous technological changes at the industry level and shifts in a firm’s strategy shape the composition of partners and the nature of alliance relationships.Read More

Why Do Firms Divest?

Published Research

In this paper, I examine how lower-cost production and new market opportunities influence the divestment decisions of firms. I argue that lower-cost production and new market opportunities in foreign markets can provide a better use of existing firm resources and posit that these opportunities are likely to influence firm divestment of home-country operations.Read More