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The macroeconomic changes as well as the challenges facing universities nowadays result in the transfer and adaptation of various concepts and organizational methods from enterprises to universities. One of such solutions is mergers. Even though there are a very large number of practical examples of university mergers in the world, at the same time there is a shortage of frameworks that would help manage mergers. The purpose of this paper is to present key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and the creation of the conceptual model of the universities’ mergers.

In this paper synthesis, the inductive approach for model development and case study description were used. The analysis and findings were based on the systematic literature review taken out from management and public policy areas. The new public management and public value governance approaches as well as strategic and process theories of mergers were applied. The descriptive approach to management was used as well.

Formulation of a Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers and ten principles of effective management of universities’ mergers that cover the entire process, from planning, through implementation, to integration.

There is a need to verify the proposed inductive model of universities’ mergers through further qualitative and mixed-methods research studies.

The paper offers a significant opportunity for practical application of the presented content, because it indicates how the know-how from one (business) sector can be valuable for the future of another sector (the over-fragmented sector of higher education).

This study presents the key areas of focus in HEIs’ consolidation processes and proposes a novel Conceptual Model of Universities’ Mergers. It concludes with the principles of effective management of universities’ mergers.

Despite the continuation of hospital mergers in many western countries, it is uncertain if and how hospital mergers impact the quality of care. This poses challenges for the regulation of mergers. The purpose of this paper is to understand: how regulators and hospitals frame the impact of merging on the quality and safety of care and how hospital mergers might be regulated, given their uncertain impact on quality and safety of care.

This paper studies the regulation of hospital mergers in The Netherlands. In a qualitative study design, it draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with inspectors from the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (Inspectorate) and respondents from three hospitals that merged between 2013 and 2015. This paper draws from literature on process-based regulation to understand how regulators can monitor hospital mergers.

This paper finds that inspectors and hospital respondents frame the process of merging as potentially disruptive to daily care practices. While inspectors emphasise the dangers of merging, hospital respondents report how merging stimulated them to reflect on their care practices and how it afforded learning between hospitals. Although the Inspectorate considers mergers a risk to quality of care, their regulatory practices are hesitant.

This qualitative study sheds light on how merging might affect key hospital processes and daily care practices. It offers opportunities for the regulation of hospital mergers that acknowledges rather than aims to dispel the uncertain and potentially ambiguous impact of mergers on quality and safety of care.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the post-merger integration duration on acquiring firms’ leverage behavior before and after a merger, using a dynamic model in which full merger benefits cannot be consumed at the instant of a merger, but rather after a pre-specified post-merger integration period.

This paper presents a dynamic model and empirical tests that describe the impact of the post-merger integration period on the capital structure dynamics of the acquiring and target firms prior to a merger and during the post-merger integration period. By incorporating costs associated with the post-merger integration period, the model can provide new implications for the leverage behavior around the merger.

Empirical tests support the model implications by showing that the longer the expected post-merger integration process, the less likely the acquirer will structure the financing of the combined firm in a manner that increases firm leverage. Since integration takes time to complete, an acquirer tends to retain financial flexibility during the integration process by assuming lower levels of debt when determining the capital structure of the merged entity.

The model generates new implications related to acquiring firms’ leverage dynamics along with the method of payment choice. The analysis of the duration of the post-merger integration period extends both the theoretical and empirical literature that tacitly assumes that the merger-related synergy is realized immediately at the merger date. This is the first model in the literature that assumes that both the acquiring and the target firms can change their capital structure overtime, which allows us to analyze both the financing structure and the merger timing. Previous empirical studies also ignore the integration period in the analysis of the method of payment choice and leverage behavior around mergers. The model in this paper can be extended along a number of dimensions.