Search results

This paper aims to demonstrate how consolidation within Europe’s mobile telecommunication markets requires willing buyers and sellers.

After highlighting the resurgence in merger and acquisition (M & A) activity in mobile telecommunications, the paper draws on a variety of secondary sources to analyse the strategies of three companies.

The paper highlights the interwoven nature of the strategies of three companies: BT, Hutchison Whampoa and Telefónica. BT has returned to the mobile telecommunications market in the UK, with the company it did not acquire being purchased by Hutchison. As Hutchison implements a “double or quits” strategy in Europe, it has acquired operations from Telefónica, which, in turn, has exited most of its non-Spanish European operations to focus on Latin America.

The paper relies on secondary data and thus highlights the challenges of doing so and the need for more information regarding M & As to be in the public domain.

There is a need to adopt a sector-wide or regional approach for analysing the strategies of telecommunication companies.

The paper uniquely provides an overview of three corporate strategies to show how they interact with one another.

The purpose of this paper is to present various institutional laws that refer to mergers and acquisitions (M & As) in India and recommend a few guidelines for institutions and multinational managers participating in foreign investment and acquisition deals.

The study is intended to review, summarize and discuss the legal framework that adheres to M & As, takeovers and foreign investment.

Major observations from the comprehensive review include the fact that higher-valuation inbound deals have been delayed or have failed because of a weak financial infrastructure, erratic nature of government officials and political intervention, and the newly elected government has aimed to attract higher inflow of investments from other developed and emerging markets by easing investment rules and offering tax holidays.

This paper, indeed, reflects unseen empirical observation with regard to the characteristics of the market for acquisitions in the given country, which has been left to further research.

The comprehensive review of acquisition laws in India and recommendations would help prospective stakeholders, namely, policymakers, M & A advisors, legal consultants, investment bankers, multinational managers and private equity firms.

This study presents atypical work, which presents a review of M & A laws in India, and it recommends fruitful guidelines for institutions in general and managers in particular.

Supply chains directly influence the differentiation and cost of a firm's products and services and its exposure to risk. The purpose of this paper is to use secondary financial data to explore the relationship between supply chain and firm performance by developing a unified proxy for supply chain performance.

Established econometric techniques were used to validate the proxy using a sample frame comprising the annual reports of 117 publicly traded UK manufacturing firms from the period 1995 to 2004.

Increases in change in the proxy lead to an increase in change in the rate of return on capital employed and a change in the rate of cash‐to‐cash cycle length, both of which are traditional measures of improved supply chain management. Moreover, as the rate of change of the proxy increases, so does enterprise value at a level that is statistically significant, indicating that improving supply chain management practices has a positive impact upon improved firm performance.

As annual financial results were used the analysis is at a high level so there is a lack of resolution in identifying discrete causes. The use of annual financial results also means that the research can only take yearly snapshots of firm performance.

The paper indicates that the supply chain is an enabler, not an impediment, to superior organisational performance.

The originality and value of this paper is that it develops a proxy to explain the relationships between supply chain and an organisation's financial performance taking into account the three imperatives of profitability, liquidity, and productivity.

Drawing upon a systematic literature review in new technology, innovation transfer and diffusion theories, and from interviews with technology leaders in digital transformation programs in the US Oil & Gas (O&G) industry, the authors explore the relationships among O&G industry dynamics, organization's absorptive capacity and resource commitment for new digital technology adoption-implementation process.

The authors employed the empirical survey method to gather the data (a sample size of 172) in the US O&G industry and used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the measurement model for validity and reliability and the conceptual model for hypothesized structural relationships.

The results provide support for the study’s causal model of adoption and implementation with positive and direct relationships between the initiation and trial stages, between the trial stages and the evaluation of effective outcomes and between the effective outcomes and the effective implementation stages of digital technologies. The results also reveal partial mediating relationships of industry dynamics, absorptive capacity and resource commitment between respective stages.

Based on the current study's findings, managers are recommended to pay attention to the evolving industry dynamics during the initiation stage of new digital technology adoption, to utilize the organization's knowledge-based absorptive capacity during digital technology trial and selection stages and to support the digital technology implementation project when the adoption decision of a particular digital technology has been made.

The empirical research contributes literature on digital technology adoption and implementation by identifying and demonstrating the importance of industry dynamics, absorptive capacity and resource commitment factors as mediating variables at various stages of the adoption-implementation process and empirically validating a process-based causal model of digital technology adoption and a successful implementation project that has been missing in the current body of literature on digital transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the technological, licensing and strategic implications of the move to the fourth generation of mobile telecommunications

An initial section provides an analysis of what is meant by fourth generation mobile telecommunications based upon a new taxonomy. This is followed by an overview of all countries where Long Term Evolution is being, or has been, introduced, introducing multiple case studies to illustrate the variety of approaches adopted. After a subsequent summary of what is happening in respect of WiMAX, the paper concludes with an assessment of the prospects for fourth generation technology.

One key finding is that what is commonly understood to be fourth generation technology is in practice 3.9G rather than 4G. Another is that “true 4G” is shortly to be ratified and will gradually be introduced over the next few years, but that it will be used in different ways by different operators in different countries.

Some data for the case studies is hard to establish with certainty.

Very fast mobile networks are already a reality. Ultra‐fast networks will soon appear but only in limited places. Most customers will not notice the difference.

Things that are already easy and quick to download on a mobile device will become even easier and quicker to download. Whether this will matter much is a moot point.

The taxonomy of mobile technology is the only one available in the public sector.

The objective of this paper is to empirically test and verify the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility and to assess the influence of these flexibilities on operational performance.

A research framework consisting of nine pairs of hypotheses was developed using an extensive literature review. Using a self-administered questionnaire, 391 responses were collected, and these responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling techniques.

The findings empirically confirm the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility. The proposed model explained 59 percent variance in volume flexibility and 63 percent variance in product-mix flexibility. Volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility together explained 38 percent variance in operational performance.

Theoretically, this study advances flexibility literature in two significant ways. First, the study conducts first of its kind quantitative empirical investigation considering upstream, downstream, and internal integration practices as enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility. Second, this study adds to the flexibility literature by suggesting the positive influence of volume and product-mix flexibility on the operational performance of firms.

The study reinforces the role of enablers in the development of volume and product-mix flexibilities. Thus, the study provides a comprehensive view of flexibility enablers that can be used as a diagnostic tool, which practitioners can use to assess and deploy flexibility.

The objective of this paper is to understand the perception of patients towards health care services in Lucknow based on the 20‐item scale

The 20‐item scale was administered to 500 users of health care centres comprising a tertiary health centre, a state medical university and two missionary hospitals in Lucknow, India.

The scale was found to be reliable to a great extent with an overall Cronbach alpha value of 0.74. “Health personnel and practices” and “health care delivery” were found to be statistically significant in impacting the perception. Respondents were relatively less positive on items related to “access to services” and “adequacy of doctors for women”. The tertiary health centre was rated poorer than the medical university and missionary hospitals.

This tool may be applied for qualitative assessment of the services of health care programmes as well as health care centres of India.

The paper draws the attention of health policy makers in considering the requirements and opinions of patients to effect substantial change and significant improvement in the quality of the health care services for better and increased utilization of the services.

The paper fulfils the need of measuring perceived quality of health care services and points out that the improvement in health care services requires immediate and urgent attention from policy makers.

Written in 1729, Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay, A Modest Proposal remains a challenge to the logic of current accounting practices. By shining a harshly sceptical light on the languages and assumptions of “Political arithmetick” (then a novel intellectual discipline), Swift shows the capacity of this ancestor discourse of modern accounting to blind its users to the reality of the situation they face. Argues that accounting discourse should open itself to “undisciplined” interpretation so as to reduce the risk of being blind to important factors that fully “disciplined” professional activity cannot see. In particular, argues that: a hermeneutic model based on deconstrnctive theories of blindness and insight deserves to be imported into accountancy theory from literary theory; that accountants should attend to satirical modes of writing, such as Swift’s Proposal, so as to unsettle and test the assumptions that underpin their professional practice. Consequently, addresses both the history of accountancy and its present habits of interpretation.