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Our meta-analysis of 92 international samples, with a total sample size of 8,491, demonstrates that firms following internationalization strategies by means of external growth modes can realize a significant positive performance impact on firm performance (r=0.156). This performance effect is significantly stronger than for firms using external growth strategies in their home country (117 samples, with a total sample size of 29,998, r=0.077). Moderating effects are found for the type of international business combination (mergers and acquisitions versus alliance) and the internationalizing firm's region of origin, whereas the relatedness of the firms and the region entered show no moderating impact.

The author defines and discusses the three laws of business combinations that are essential to a profitable use of resources.

The author shows how applying these laws is necessary for success.

All business combinations must have the potential to create joint value, must be governed to realize this value, and must share value in a way that provides a reward to each party’s investment

In remix strategy, the fundamental unit of analysis is the combination of resources that yields value. That combination competes with other combinations. Some combinations will gain advantage over others because they encompass just the right resources; others will gain advantage because they manage their collective resources better than others do.

The author’s insight is that instead seeing competition as a battle of firm vs. firm, practitioners need to understand how bundles of resources compete, regardless of whether they are organized as firms.

This paper seeks to investigate the link between business strategy and performance, giving special attention to the composition of combination strategies.

A survey assessing business strategy and performance was completed by managers representing 277 retail businesses in the USA.

The combination strategy was associated with higher performance in some but not all instances. Strategic clarity – the extent to which a single strategy reflects the organization's strategic intent – was also associated with organizational performance. Businesses with high and low strategic clarity outperformed those with moderate strategic clarity.

This paper investigated US retailers and did not assess businesses in other industries or countries. Future research that seeks to replicate these findings is warranted.

Businesses can pursue either a single generic strategy (i.e. low cost or differentiation, prospector or defender or analyzer, etc.) or attempt to combine two or more strategies. Porter and others have warned that a combination strategy is suboptimal because of trade‐offs inherent in “pure” strategies. While some businesses have pursued a combination strategy and performed poorly, others have done so with great success. Evidence presented in the paper attempts to resolve this conundrum, suggesting that high‐performing businesses either concentrate on a single strategy along the Miles and Snow typology or combine all three equally. Those attempting intermediate combinations are more likely to perform poorly.

The paper proposes the notion of strategic clarity and provides evidence that supports a U‐shaped link between strategic clarity and business performance.

Continued research around innovation within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) family businesses is needed to better understand the influence of specific resources and capabilities that might promote and/or constrain entrepreneurial activities. The purpose of this paper is to develop an organising framework investigating SME family business innovation drawing on a Schumpeterian understanding of innovation as the introduction of new combinations.

Four guiding principles are developed and applied to an illustrative case study of an entrepreneurial family business that highlights the usefulness of complexity thinking for understanding innovation.

NZ Sock provides a rich illustrative case study to highlight how principles of complexity thinking along with Schumpeterian notions of innovation can usefully inform the authors’ understanding of entrepreneurial SME family businesses. The proposed guiding principles offered are borne out in application to the illustrative case example.

The findings suggest that complexity thinking and a Schumpeterian lens can usefully inform and extend the authors’ understanding of innovation within entrepreneurial SME family businesses. Further research would benefit from exploring the guiding principles proposed in other entrepreneurial SME family businesses to further substantiate this field of inquiry.

Principles of complexity thinking may provide additional understanding and insight for SME family business members needing to innovate and adapt to ever-changing operating environments.

Innovation is critical to the long-term survival and success of such firms; yet, to date little theoretical contribution and research has been offered in the field of innovation within the context of SME family businesses. Complex adaptive systems provide a lens from which to understand such businesses and that that a complexity framework helpfully allows attention to be given to such phenomena as emergence, adaptability and combinations through which innovation outcomes and processes may be understood. This paper offers four guiding principles that can be further tested and refined.

In the process of harmonizing International Accounting Standards (IAS/IFRS), scholars and standard setters still need to overcome unresolved issues related to both goodwill duration and accounting recognition. This paper aims to compare the academic background on goodwill with current IAS. Specifically, the goal is to criticize existing practices and advance a revision of accounting for goodwill.

The paper is based on a review of the relevant literature on notions, theories and accounting approaches on goodwill and on an investigation of IAS/IFRS on accounting for goodwill. By critically integrating literature and practices, the authors provide implications for a revision of IAS.

The findings show the two main internally coherent theoretical approaches and the incoherence in current goodwill accounting standards. The paper contributes to the debate on accounting for goodwill by suggesting new conceptual arguments in relation to the controversies related to its accounting treatment.

The findings offer insights and guidelines that can help standard setters revise current accounting standards. Inter alia, standards setters should revisit issues related to goodwill evaluation and record limitations in future debates to find better solutions.

This study shows the incoherence of current accounting standards. Furthermore, the findings contradict the general opinion that, in current IAS, goodwill can be recognized only if acquired in business combinations and not if internally generated. Thereby, the authors suggest to shift the international accounting standards board focus from the preference between amortization and impairment to the coherence of goodwill accounting approaches.

This paper aims to assess the influence of strategic capabilities on the business strategy‐performance relationship among retail businesses in Argentina, Peru, and the USA.

Zahra and Covin's self‐reported scale was amended and utilized to categorize businesses along Porter's typology. Strategic capability scales were adopted from DeSarbo and associates. Self‐reporting scales to assess relative competitive and objective performance in the present study were adopted from Ramanujam and Venkatraman. A survey containing these scales was administered to 277 attendees at a retail trade show in the USA. The survey – translated into Spanish – was distributed by mail and completed by 136 retailers in Peru and 163 retailers in Argentina.

Links were assessed among strategic capabilities, generic business strategies, and performance in retail businesses in Argentina, Peru and the USA. Support was found for links between the focus strategy and both marketing and linking capabilities, between the differentiation strategy and technology capabilities, and between the cost leadership strategy and management capabilities. The low cost‐differentiation combination strategy was associated with high performance in strategic groups whose businesses possess strong management and technology capabilities. These findings highlight the importance of developing strategy‐specific capabilities as a foundation for superior performance.

This study relied on self‐reported assessments of competitive strategy, organizational capabilities, and performance. It utilized cluster analysis, assessed only retailers, and considered only three nations.

Extant strategic group research highlights the link between group membership and firm performance. The present study reinforces previous research. In addition, the presence of organization‐specific strategic capabilities helps to explain why some businesses outperform others in the same strategic group.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the motives behind individuals’ choice to have parallel business-employment careers (hybrid entrepreneurship) with a particular focus on passion (i.e. to work with something one is passionate about) as the main motive.

A survey was administered to 262 Swedish hybrid entrepreneurs. Hypotheses proposed associations of the individual's age at business start-up and weekly hours spent on the business with passion as the main motive for the hybrid form. Logistic regression was used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicated that first, the ability to work with something one is passionate about is the top motive for combining employment with a side business; second, passion is more likely to be the main motive behind the hybrid form among individuals who are older at business start-up; third, passion is less likely to be the main motive behind the hybrid form among individuals who spend more time on the business.

The study focusses on passion as motive for hybrid entrepreneurship, and in doing so, it does not test the extent to which hybrid entrepreneurs experience passion.

The results support the popular notion that passion drives people to have parallel business-employment careers. Findings indicating that passion as a motive is more common among those who are older at start-up and less common among those who spend more time on the business suggest the importance of acknowledging hybrid entrepreneurs’ various profiles when approaching them in research and practice.

This is the first study on motives behind hybrid entrepreneurship.

The flexibility of managers to respond to risk and uncertainty inherent in business decisions is clearly of value. This value has historically been recognized in an ad hoc manner in the absence of a methodology for more rigorous assessment of value. The application of real option methodology represents a more objective mechanism that allows managers to hedge against adverse effects and exploit upside potential. Of particular interest to managers in the merger and acquisition (M&A) process is the value of such flexibility related to the particular terms of a transaction. Typically, stock for stock transactions take more time to complete as compared to cash given the time lapse between announcement and completion. Over this period, if stock prices are volatile, stock for stock exchanges may result in adverse selection through the dilution of shareholder wealth of an acquiring firm or a target firm.

The paper develops a real option collar model that may be employed by managers to measure the market price risk involved to their shareholders in offering or accepting stock. We further discuss accounting issues related to this contingency pricing effect. Using an acquisition example from U.S. banking industry we illustrate how the collar arrangement may be used to hedge market price risk through flexibility to renegotiate the deal by exercising managerial options.