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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of open innovation, especially focusing on technological M&A, on subsequent innovation and changes to the firm’s core technological portfolio.

The study suggests three types of core technological areas, based on prior focus and experience in technological categories. These are 1) the existing core area, in which the acquirer firm retains its knowledge and expertise, 2) the enhanced core area, where knowledge and expertise in the acquirer firm’s insufficient areas are strengthened, and 3) the new core area, i.e. new knowledge fields in which the acquirer firm ventures into. The study then analyzes the effects of two key knowledge characteristics of the target firm, similarity and complementarity, on post-M&A innovation outcomes in each of the three core technological areas.

The results confirm that while none of the investigated knowledge characteristics of the target firm is advantageous for post-M&A innovation outcomes in existing core areas, similarity of the target firm does facilitate post-M&A innovation outcomes in enhanced core areas. Moreover, the results confirm that complementarity of the target firm is beneficial for post-M&A innovation outcomes in new core areas.

The study explains the reconfiguration mechanism of a firm’s core technological portfolio. It also suggests an extended framework to analyze innovation outcomes in more detail. Moreover, the study helps to explain why most M&As result in failure.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

THE enterprise of two London newspapers, the Tribune (for the second time) and the Daily Chronicle, in organizing exhibitions of books affords a convenient excuse for once again bringing forward proposals for a more permanent exhibition. On many occasions during the past twenty years the writer has made suggestions for the establishment of a central book bazaar, to which every kind of book‐buyer could resort in order to see and handle the latest literature on every subject. An experiment on wrong lines was made by the Library Bureau about fifteen years ago, but here, as in the exhibitions above mentioned, the arrangement was radically bad. Visiting the Daily Chronicle show in company with other librarians, and taking careful note of the planning, one was struck by the inutility of having the books arranged by publishers and not by subjects. Not one visitor in a hundred cares twopence whether books on electricity, biography, history, travel, or even fairy tales, are issued by Longmans, Heinemann, Macmillan, Dent or any other firm. What everyone wants to see is all the recent and latest books on definite subjects collected together in one place. The arrangements at the Chronicle and Tribune shows are just a jumble of old and new books placed in show‐cases by publishers' names, similar to the abortive exhibition held years ago in Bloomsbury Street. What the book‐buyer wants is not a miscellaneous assemblage of books of all periods, from 1877 to date, arranged in an artistic show‐case and placed in charge of a polite youth who only knows his own books—and not too much about them—but a properly classified and arranged collection of the newest books only, which could be expounded by a few experts versed in literature and bibliography. What is the use of salesmen in an exhibition where books are not sold outright? If these exhibitions were strictly limited to the newest books only, there would be much less need for salesmen to be retained as amateur detectives. Another decided blemish on such an exhibition is the absence of a general catalogue. Imagine any exhibition on business lines in which visitors are expected to cart away a load of catalogues issued separately by the various exhibitors and all on entirely different plans of arrangement! The British publisher in nearly everything he does is one of the most hopeless Conservatives in existence. He will not try anything which has not been done by his grandfather or someone even more remote, so that publishing methods remain crystallized almost on eighteenth century lines. The proposal about to be made is perhaps far too revolutionary for the careful consideration of present‐day publishers, but it is made in the sincere hope that it may one day be realized. It has been made before without any definite details, but its general lines have been discussed among librarians for years past.

Creating and sustaining trust in buyer‐seller relationships constitutes a critical strategic skill in the international travel trade. After conceptualizing the importance of trust between wholesale buyers and suppliers in a tourism context, this paper proposes a model composed of the factors that influence both the level and type of trust. Trust is an essential part of successful buyer‐supplier relationships and this model identifies and explains a number of factors known to influence supplier trust in the business‐to‐business relationship.

Discusses research ideas on the distinctions between data, information and knowledge, the categories of knowledge and knowledge‐processing activities in Holsapple and Whinston’s (HW’s) taxonomy (1987, 1988a, 1988b), and their application to markets and the activities of the firm. Describes a manufacturing firm’s inputs, production processes and outputs in terms of HW’s taxonomy, pointing out that management must filter the information surrounding the firm to turn it into knowledge of various types, e.g. descriptive, derived, assimilative etc. Considers the role of information for customers of and investors in the firm; and the relationship between knowledge and efficiency. Identifies three types of knowledge workers (builders, stewards and appliers) and calls for further research on the taxonomy of knowledge and standards of knowledge within the finance discipline.

We examine the benefits for firms participating in collaborations funded via minority equity placements. Selling firms, on average, realize significant increases in share value – strongly correlated with the size of the equity stake, its beta, and the relatedness of the two firms (by industry). Shares of purchasing firms, though, show neutral responses on average (but positive response for R&D intensive alliances). Further, purchasing firms have better financial performance than their industry peers in the years surrounding the announcement (suggesting, unlike joint ventures, that poor performance is not their motivation). Selling firms, however, may be motivated by poor operating performance.

I suppose that most noticeable of all the changes in our profession since I came into it has been the multiplicity of the methods by which one can become a librarian. A. E. Standley says in a recent article in the L.A.R., in 1970: “The term librarian includes the Library Association chartered librarian, the graduate with a degree in librarianship, the scholar librarian, the information and intelligence officer, the translator, the abstracter, the non‐library‐qualified subject expert”.

In a world of escalating competitiveness, information technology (IT), such as online banking, and relationship marketing are becoming increasingly important to marketers. This paper investigates the impact of IT in a relationship marketing context. In particular it focuses on how customers use a combination of IT channels to interact with their financial service provider and how this interaction affects the relationship quality between the customer and the financial service provider. This study provides empirical evidence that indicates that those customers who do not exhibit an “IT gap” have more positive perceptions of their relationship with their financial service provider. These findings suggest that firms that fail to provide channels that their customers seek and value will find it more difficult to forge strong relationships with their customers – a critical condition for success in many of today’s industries.

Action in the 1980s to a large extent belonged to the hard, hyper-masculine physiques of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, who seemed to embody the aggressive, go-getting, testosterone-fuelled spirit of the age. Except, as this chapter argues, it would be a mistake to take these representations of masculinity at face value.

Susan Jeffords has noted the evolution of Schwarzenegger's Terminator character from hard-bodied killer to nurturing father figure, linking this to the change in perceptions of masculinity between the Reagan and Bush eras. Indeed, as Schwarzenegger moved into the 90s his films increasingly played with notions of ‘the feminine’ – from the nurturing Schwarzenegger of Kindergarten Cop (1990) to the ‘maternal’ Schwarzenegger of Junior (1994).

This chapter focuses on Schwarzenegger's Commando (1985), the first film in which he plays a contemporary, ‘normal’ (though still unusually muscular) man: a widowed ex-special forces commando and now full-time father, named John Matrix. The act of naming this supposed he-man ‘Womb’ is only the beginning of the film's surprising and subversive disquisitions on gender. In between (and sometimes during) the expertly staged fist fights, gun battles and explosions, homoeroticism, the male gaze and gender stereotyping all bubble away under the surface. Schwarzenegger's body is presented for scrutiny in a way previously reserved for female Hollywood stars, and the film's antagonist, an embittered former colleague who is obsessed with Matrix in a way that verges on the erotic, transcends butch and enters the realms of macho camp. The film questions and subverts presumptions about the masculine and the feminine, while still delivering an ostensibly macho, quintessentially 1980s action film.

We discuss the ‘gloomy’ side of firms’ embeddedness in networks of inter-firm partnerships. We propose a nested understanding of the effects of three levels of overembeddedness – environmental, inter-organizational and dyadic overembeddedness – on subsequent inter-firm partnership formation and argue for a joint examination of these three levels and their interactions over time. As a whole, increases in firms’ embeddedness will generate decreasing returns to the firms involved, prompting (i) the search for and attachment to novel partners and (ii) the dissolution of extant partnerships. On the flipside, overembeddedness thus sparks network evolution – by cueing firms to look beyond their embedded partnerships.