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The present study develops a multi-theoretic framework of the mechanisms of value creation in interorganizational relationships and of the key factors influencing those mechanisms. The integrative use of several theories in building the model is justified by numerous studies suggesting that a multi-theoretic approach is required to understand the complexity of interorganizational relationships (Gulati, 1998; Osborn & Hagedoorn, 1997; Park et al., 2002). We believe that the relationships between start-up companies and their corporate investors, with each party holding a diversity of strategic and financial objectives, are not less complex than other potential interorganizational relationships. They may therefore also require ideas from several theories to be properly understood. In this study, we build the models applying primarily the resource-based and the knowledge-based views, as well as social capital theory. Ideas from other theoretical approaches are used to complement these theories.

This study uses a new, fine-grained, firm-based measure of target resources to investigate the relationship between target resource type and acquirer stock market performance. Our findings suggest that the market punishes acquirers of knowledge-based resources more than those that buy property-based resources due to the perceived uncertainty regarding the value of targets’ knowledge resources. In support of the underlying uncertainty argument, we find that managers announcing knowledge-based mergers provide more information in their press releases than those announcing property-based transactions. While prior studies have suggested that resource relatedness may moderate the resource type and acquisition performance link, our findings do not support either a direct or moderating relationship.

Merger and acquisition activity generates a substantial amount of discussion within business circles among academics, analysts, and the media. Even though research and experience demonstrates that many mergers and acquisitions fall short of the intended goal of creating shareholder value, mergers and acquisitions still persist in the marketplace. The purpose of this discussion is to suggest that a potential explanation for this dilemma can be found by applying the resource-based rationale of acquisition within an evolutionary framework of business dynamics.

The paper empirically investigates how family firms appropriate acquired resources to become more innovative in the context of merger waves. It draws on resource-based view and the theory of first mover (dis)advantages to examine the implications of the timing of acquisitions on innovation in family firms.

The paper uses a panel data set of Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 manufacturing firms followed over a period of 31 years.

The study finds empirical support for the predictions that family firms are more able to utilize acquired resources better than nonfamily firms. Furthermore, targets acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable to family firms and associated with more innovation than for nonfamily firms.

The paper establishes that resources acquired during the upswing of a merger wave are more valuable, provide better resource synergies and impact innovation positively in family firms than nonfamily firms. Second, the paper makes an empirical contribution that family firms absorb external resources markedly differently and more efficiently than nonfamily firms. Third, the paper enhances a better understanding of the influence of family ownership on the relationship between acquisitions and innovation outputs.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between the group affiliates’ dual legitimacy (membership legitimacy and societal legitimacy) and dual resource acquisition (intra-group and out-group), and the moderating roles of environmental uncertainty and munificence in the emerging economies.

This paper adopts hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses based on the unique data of 251 group affiliated firms in China and applies the alternative measurements and alternative methodology of structural equation modeling into robustness check to confirm the results.

The results show as follows: the group affiliates can benefit from membership legitimacy for intra-group resource acquisition and out-group resource acquisition through the mediations of societal legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition. However, in the linkage between affiliates’ membership legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition and the linkage between societal legitimacy and out-group resource acquisition, environmental uncertainty plays the positive moderating roles while environmental munificence plays the negative moderating roles. Under the condition of high environmental uncertainty and low environmental munificence, the linkage between membership legitimacy and intra-group resource acquisition, and the linkage between societal legitimacy and out-group resource acquisition reach the strongest level.

The findings highlight the importance of dual legitimacy building for group affiliates to acquire resources both inside and outside the business group when they operate in emerging economies characterized by high environmental uncertainty and low environmental munificence. However, it does not explore the contextual factors (e.g. institutional distance) affecting the relationship between the affiliate’s membership legitimacy and societal legitimacy. Then more group-level factors are expected to be included and explored with multi-level models in the future studies.

The findings reveal the mechanism of how group affiliates benefiting differently from dual legitimacy to acquire resources in the emerging economies, which also provide a new interpretation for the questions of who benefiting more from the group affiliation, how and why (Carney et al., 2009). This research also explores the moderating roles of task environmental characteristics (environmental uncertainty and environmental munificence) on the affiliate's dual legitimacy and dual resource acquisition, which helps understand why legitimacy building is more important in terms of resource acquisition in the emerging economy characterized by uncertainty and non-munificence.

Social network theory emphasizes that, to acquire needed resources, new ventures should cultivate industrial connections (intra-industry ties and extra-industry ties). In the meanwhile human capital theory focuses on entrepreneurs' employment experience, especially with respect to its breadth and depth. This study examines ties and experience to determine whether, in combination, they have positive or negative effects on resource acquisition in new ventures.

This study tests research hypotheses using questionnaire survey data with a sample of entrepreneurs in new ventures. Multivariate regression analysis is used to analyze the data.

Combining intra-industry ties and experience breadth or extra-industry ties and experience depth affects resource acquisition positively, whereas combining intra-industry ties and experience depth or extra-industry ties and experience breadth affects resource acquisition negatively.

Conclusions may be constrained by the limited sample size and source. Rather, the impact of the study lies in its identification of the effects of interaction between network ties and entrepreneurs' experience on resource acquisition. Future research can explore the effects of interaction between other dimensions of network ties and a range of entrepreneurs' experience characteristics on resource acquisition.

Entrepreneurs are provided with effective strategies to make use of their ventures' network ties and their personal accumulated experience in the process of obtaining resources.

The findings enrich the entrepreneurship literature by providing a more nuanced understanding of how and when new ventures' industry ties and entrepreneurs' employment experience together influence resource acquisition.

A firm's behavior is constrained by its access to resources owned or controlled by different constituencies in its environment. Mergers and acquisitions are one way to proactively manage these resource dependencies. Research on resource dependence reducing merger and acquisition patterns provides an important cornerstone of resource dependency theory and a basis of our present knowledge of the aggregate industry-level merger and acquisition patterns. However, due to the predominant focus on inter-industry merger and acquisition patterns in earlier research, much less is known as to whether the same logic could also be applied to explain intra-industry merger and acquisition patterns. In this chapter, we extend the resource dependence results to an intra-industry context. In particular, we show that mergers and acquisitions among pharmaceutical firms tend to take place among firms with technological and competitive interdependencies. To distinguish our finding from the competing resource scale and scope explanations, we show that the likelihood of a resource dependence reducing acquisition is moderated by the crowding of firms’ technological positions and prior alliance ties. Consistent with the resource dependence explanation, both weaken the effect of overlapping technological positions even though both alliance ties and crowding otherwise are positively related to merger and acquisition patterns in line with the social structural explanations.

Young/small firms are often seen as acquisition targets, but rarely viewed as potential acquirers. However, in this study we found that one-third of the young ventures in our sample pursued aggressive growth though acquisition of their competitors. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, we found striking evidence that young firms pursuing growth via acquisition significantly outperformed their peers who pursued growth via internal development. Thus, growth via acquisition clearly represents a viable strategic option for young, small firms.

The amount of electronic resources available in academic libraries has greatly increased in the past several years, and a number of writers have commented that electronic resources are replacing acquisitions in other formats. To see how an increase in acquisitions of electronic resources was affecting overall acquisitions, statistics for the libraries of the State University of New York (SUNY) were examined, and a related survey was done of librarians at those institutions. One conclusion was that the amount spent on electronic resources has not continually increased, but in fact decreased in some years. Another conclusion was that although electronic resources are consuming a higher proportion of the overall acquisitions budget, at least in the SUNY system the money is not necessarily coming at the expense of acquisitions in other formats.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the influence of intangible assets and similarity of resources on the choice between acquisitions and joint ventures and whether it is different in domestic and European operations. In order to test these relations, a sample of domestic and European growth deals was selected (563 deals, of which 449 are acquisitions and 114 are joint ventures). Results demonstrate that it is more probable that firms will choose acquisitions if there is a close similarity between the resources of the firms. Also, if the operation is domestic, companies with higher proportions of intangible resources prefer acquisitions.