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Ethereum-based blockchain technology (EBT) affords members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) a market advantage in deploying blockchain within their organizations, including cybersecurity and operational benefits, that leads firms to strategically invest in this nascent technology. However, the impact of such strategic investments in EBT has yet to be explored in the context of its relationship to firm value. Therefore, this study explores EBT-specific firm-level characteristics that result in a stock market reaction to announcements of strategic investments.

The authors use the event study methodology, strategic investment literature and signaling theory as contextualizing frameworks for their study. Additionally, the authors explore a new method for examining technology investments as a strategic counter to cybersecurity threats.

Firms that signal to the market their strong commitment to their strategic investment by developing an EBT proof of concept see significantly higher market returns. Firms that have had prior cybersecurity incidents are rewarded by the market for strategically investing in EBT, and when firms with large undistributed free cash flows utilize this cash for strategic EBT investment, the market is more likely to reward these firms, indicating the market views EBT investment positively in these circumstances.

The results of this study provide new evidence of the value impact of EBT for firms that suffered cybersecurity events in the past. The authors provide empirical evidence of firm-level characteristics that investors use to discern whether a strategic investment in EBT will drive organizational value. Likewise, the authors demonstrate how signaling affects investor perceptions of strategic information technology (IT) investments in EBT.

The importance of the market for corporate control as a disciplining device has received considerable research interest in recent years. Since the advent of event study methodology pioneered by Fama, Fisher, Jensen and Roll (1969), and the availability of machine readable returns data from the Center of Research on Security Prices, the effects of various control related corporate events have been well documented. Jensen and Ruback (1983) in their review of the empirical literature on the market for corporate control report that the findings in general support the hypothesis that outside takeover mechanisms do act efficiently to limit managerial departures from the objective of maximising the economic well‐being of its shareholders. They further point out that studies using the event study methodology cannot distinguish between the different sources of gains in the takeover process, namely those due to synergies, or those due to lack of efficient management in the acquired firm.

The empirical evidence on mergers and takeovers indicates that positive gains due to mergers and takeovers ac‐crue almost entirely to the target firms. While average abnormal returns to target firms are invariably positive, returns to bidding firms are negative in case of mergers and not significantly different from zero in case of takeovers (see Jensen and Ruback [1983] and De and Mathur in this issue for a review of the empirical evidence). That acquiring firms should offer the shareholders of the target firms such handsome rewards and accept marginal returns for themselves is one of the unresolved problems in the context of mergers and takeovers.

An interesting issue little explored in the celebrity endorsement literature is whether or not the activities of a celebrity endorser affect company performance. We examine the impact of Tiger Woods’s tournament performance on the endorsing firm’s value subsequent to the contract signing. We do not find a relationship between Tiger’ss tournament placement and the excess returns of Fortune Brands (parent of Titleist). This is likely due to Titleist being a very small contributor to the total market value of Fortune Brands. We also fail to find a significant relationship for American Express suggesting the market does not view a golfer endorsing financial services as credible. We do, however, find a positive and significant impact of Tiger’s performance on Nike’s excess returns suggesting that the market values the additional publicity that Nike receives when Tiger is in contention to win.

An extensive, integrated review of literature precedes a new typology of alliances based on participating firms’ relative position in the supply chain (scale or link) and the nature of their cooperation (equity or non‐equity). This typology helps to distinguish among a bewildering array of alliances and to explicate alliance motivations and performance on impact of e‐business technological innovations. Theoretical and managerial implications follow.

The paper explores the impact of the quality of accounting in a given country, as measured by an index of earnings opacity, on the country's level of corruption. The results of a regression of corruption on earnings opacity for a sample of 34 countries show significant relationships between the level of corruption and the level of earnings opacity after controlling for economic development, human development, size of government and economic freedom.

Although primarily treated as two distinct research streams, strategic alliances and mergers and acquisitions together occupy much of the strategic management discourse. Alliances, in many cases, end in acquisitions as firms use alliances as intermediate strategic options to eventually acquire a partner. As the discipline of strategy matures and the frequency and the volume of inter-firm cooperation continue to rise, it is imperative to integrate these two research streams for a holistic understanding of the theory of the firm. The purpose of this conceptual piece is threefold. First, we review the extant studies that combine these two governance modes: alliance and acquisitions. Second, drawing on the dominant strategic management theories, we highlight how prior inter-firm alliances inform future acquisitions in terms of (a) pre-combination decisions, (b) post-deal integration processes, (c) alternatives and strategies, and (d) performance outcomes. Finally, in view of the emerging trends and evocative gaps, we offer a conceptual road map to encourage future theoretical development and empirical research.

This paper aims to conduct bibliometric analysis on the studies dealing with capital structure’s speed of adjustment (SoA) and identify the prominent themes while suggesting future research directions in the area. The existing reviews broadly focus on the capital structure, which provides the scope for conducting a review on this sub-aspect of capital structure.

This study uses a three-stage process to conduct this review: identification of academic journals, selection and analysis of target papers. This study uses a combination of bibliometric tools and a system thinking approach to assess the current status of publications and emerging themes within the literature.

This study has found a progressive evolution of SoA in capital structure research from 1984 to 2021. Studies largely focus on implementing the dynamic models to analyse the impact of adjustment costs, dynamic economic conditions, corporate governance practices and other variables on the firms’ adjustment speed and financial decisions. The network analysis of citations, keywords and clusters gives further knowledge on the intellectual structure of the data.

This study is highly dependent on the papers available within the SCOPUS database. Studies not included herein are not part of this analysis, which may or may not bear an effect on the study’s findings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the application of systems engineering concept of “system thinking approach” to identify literature gap and suggest directions for forthcoming research is the first of its kind, thus adding a novel and multidisciplinary aspect to this study.

In this paper, I review the concept of “institutional voids” that provides a way to understand the structure of emerging markets. These voids impede would-be buyers from getting together with would-be sellers, and hence compromise the functioning of markets. Entrepreneurs must respond to these voids. Their endeavors, however, are also the means through which the voids are progressively removed. I review my work on the contours of such entrepreneurship in many emerging markets, with the greatest research emphasis on China and India. I conclude with a focus on attempts to circumvent a particularly insidious class of institutional voids, those that prevent the marginalized two-thirds of the world’s population from participating in the economic mainstream. Cumulatively, my work calls for our profession to think more creatively and eclectically about our research and teaching in a way that displays greater contextual intelligence toward ubiquitous and socially costly voids.

This paper aims to study the leverage adjustment behavior of firms distinguished based on financial flexibility. Financial flexibility is one of the key strengths of the companies to borrow funds for long-term capital investment. The lack of extensive studies in this domain motivates the authors to delve into the significance of financial flexibility in making corporate capital structure decisions.

The data comprise a combination of firm-specific and macroeconomic variables for firms in eight manufacturing sectors from 2009 to 2020. The authors employ an advance estimator, dynamic panel fraction, on the partial adjustment model to investigate the diverse impact on capital structure's speed of adjustment (SoA) between the financially flexible and financially inflexible firms. Furthermore, the authors utilize the generalized method of moments and panel-corrected standard errors to establish the robustness.

The empirical analysis reveals that the SoA of financially flexible firms lies between 19.75% and 35.38% and the SoA of financially inflexible firms lies between 11.66% and 25.81%. Due to their conserved debt capabilities, financially flexible firms can rely on leverage to stay near the target whenever they move away from it. Furthermore, financially inflexible firms exhibit a low adjustment speed due to their incompetence to borrow funds to benefit from new growth opportunities. The existence of a target ratio among the studied firms is identified from the positive coefficient of lagged dependent variable, and the relevance of trade-off theory is proved by the quick adjustment speeds in most sectors.

The sectoral distinction in the backdrop of the financial flexibility component adds to the research novelty and managerial implications.