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This paper aims to review the relevant literature on mergers and acquisitions in an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of what we know about mergers and which parts of the puzzle are still incomplete.

This literature review consists of three key sections. The first part of this paper summarises the literature on the cyclical nature of mergers referred to in the literature as merger waves. The second section reviews the causes and consequences of takeovers; it first reviews the causes, or drivers, of acquisitions, while focusing on the fact that acquisitions happen in waves and then reviews the consequences of takeovers, with a predominant focus on the impacts of mergers on the economic performance of acquirers. The third part of the review summarises the theories, as well as previous empirical studies, on determinants of announcement returns and post-acquisition performance of combined firms.

Merger activity demonstrates a wavy pattern, i.e. mergers are clustered in industries through time. The causes suggested for this fluctuating pattern include industry- and economy-level shocks, mis-valuation and managerial herding. Market reaction to announcement of acquisitions is, on average, slightly negative for acquirer stocks and significantly positive for target stocks. The combined abnormal return is positive. These findings have been consistent over several decades of investigation. Prior research also identifies a number of factors that are related to performance of acquisitions. These factors are categorised and reviewed in five different groups: acquirer characteristics, target characteristics, bid characteristics, industry characteristics and macro-environment characteristics.

This review illustrates a number of issues. Prior research is heavily biased towards gains to acquirers and factors that affect these gains. It is also biased towards finding sources of value creation through mergers despite the fact that several theories suggest that mergers can be value-destroying. In fact, value destruction is often attributed to managers’ self-interest (agency problem) and mistakes (hubris). However, the mechanisms through which mergers destroy value are rarely addressed. Aside from that, the possibility of simultaneous creation and destruction of value in acquisitions is not often considered. Finally, after several decades of investigation, a key question is not completely answered yet: “What are the sources of value in mergers and acquisitions?”

This paper aims to review the relevant literature on mergers and acquisitions in an attempt to provide a comprehensive account of what we know about mergers and which parts of the puzzle are still incomplete.

This literature review consists of three key sections. The first part of this paper summarises the literature on the cyclical nature of mergers referred to in the literature as merger waves. The second section reviews the causes and consequences of takeovers; it first reviews the causes, or drivers, of acquisitions, while focusing on the fact that acquisitions happen in waves and then reviews the consequences of takeovers, with a predominant focus on the impacts of mergers on the economic performance of acquirers. The third part of the review summarises the theories as well as previous empirical studies on determinants of announcement returns and post-acquisition performance of combined firms.

Merger activity demonstrates a wavy pattern, i.e. mergers are clustered in industries through time. The causes suggested for this fluctuating pattern include industry and economy-level shocks, mis-valuation and managerial herding. Market reaction to announcement of acquisitions is, on average, slightly negative for acquirer stocks and significantly positive for target stocks. The combined abnormal return is positive. These findings have been consistent over several decades of investigation. The prior research also identifies a number of factors that are related to performance of acquisitions. These factors are categorised and reviewed in five different groups: acquirer characteristics, target characteristics, bid characteristics, industry characteristics and macro-environment characteristics.

This review illustrates a number of issues. Prior research is heavily biased towards gains to acquirers and factors that affect these gains. It is also biased towards finding sources of value creation through mergers, despite the fact that several theories suggest that mergers can be value-destroying. In fact, value destruction is often attributed to managers’ self-interest (agency problem) and mistakes (hubris). However, the mechanisms through which mergers destroy value are rarely addressed. Aside from that, the possibility of simultaneous creation and destruction of value in acquisitions is not often considered. Finally, after several decades of investigation, a key question is not completely answered yet: “What are the sources of value in mergers and acquisitions?”

This study investigates the impact of tourists’ perception of consumer-generated content (CGC) on their travel behaviors. Online questionnaire survey was conducted on the clients of travel agency along with onsite interviews of visitors at several busy tourist destinations/spots in Taiwan including Alishan, Sun-Moon Lake, and airports. In total 316 responses were generated. The findings indicate that usability of social media is the strongest factor that contributes to respondents’ perceived functional and hedonic quality. Functional quality of social media then draw respondents’ awareness that eventually increases their intention to visit a destination of interest. The results also indicate that functional quality is more important than hedonic in terms of increasing the propensity of using social media.

This paper aims to illuminate the issue of whether there is a significant difference between long-term abnormal return of acquirers across industries, and which industries achieve better returns.

This paper investigates whether there is a significant difference between abnormal return of acquirers across industries. The impact of timing of the deal on the acquirer returns is also studied in this paper. In the regression analysis, we control for acquirer’s size along with a number of deal characteristics, such as method of payment, the mode of the acquisition, the diversifying nature of the deal and value of the deal, to examine whether the differences in acquirer returns across industries persist when these factors are taken into account.

The results of the study propose discrepancy in acquirers’ long-term abnormal returns across industries. While a number of industries, such as petroleum and natural gas, insurance and machinery, experienced significantly positive abnormal performance, others like business services and medical equipment have demonstrated significantly negative long-term returns.

This paper investigates the industry impact on performance of acquirers. The results of this research provide more comprehensive evidence from all of the industries that have been involved in mergers and acquisition deals during the period 1981-2007 so that the returns of different industries can be compared. Most importantly, the evidence rejects the equality of mean abnormal returns across industries at significant levels.

This study aims to build upon resource orchestration theory to theorize and empirically test a model that demonstrates how knowledge assets and innovation ambidexterity trigger a synergy in favor of firm performance.

Drawing on a survey of 158 Iranian knowledge-intensive companies, this study uses the partial least squares based on structural equation modeling to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that two elements of knowledge assets, namely, structural and relational capital, indirectly affect firm performance through the full mediation of innovation ambidexterity. The findings indicate that human capital has no relationship with both innovation ambidexterity and firm performance.

This study offers fresh insights into the issue of how organizations can create value from an effective orchestration of various strategic resources and capabilities, including knowledge assets and innovation ambidexterity.

This study applies resource orchestration theory to concurrently the areas of knowledge resources and organizational ambidexterity to show how innovation ambidexterity plays a role in translating three various knowledge assets into performance.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that unsustainable revenues in municipalities are short term and may have an adverse effect on urban systems. Focusing on stable financial resources can reduce such adverse effects. According to the legal obligations of municipalities in the creation of sustainable revenue, developing tourism-based activities in municipalities can play a significant role in providing a sustainable income.

This study aims to assess the positive effects of economic opportunities related to tourism for the municipalities in Iran’s large-scale cities and to identify the hidden opportunities of tourism. Also, from interviews and analysis of themes based on the situation, task, action, result model, tourism opportunities have been extracted and classified.

As a result of this research, hidden income-generating opportunities of urban tourism have been identified for municipalities, including those depending on situation, tasks, actions and results. For each of these categories, strategies for the realization of tourism opportunities are presented. Tourism’s hidden opportunities include those relating to organizational aspects, tourism planning, tourism diplomacy, handicrafts, health tourism, event tourism and urban tourism marketing.

By taking advantage of these opportunities, income generation, employment and urban management will be improved in the municipalities.

Online reputation manager has become increasingly important in tourism industry. Managers, regardless of working for a hospitality structure or a tourism destination, are paying more and more attention in respect of the importance of reputational levels. Online reputation, in fact, originates in visitor's user-generated contents (UGCs) but reverberates on the whole web, on successive visitors' attitude and behavior, and on managed organization performances. How to manage online reputation in tourism and destination management anyway mostly stayed an anecdotal topic for many years. While best practices exist, indeed, literature has frequently neglected their systematization. Building on this need, this book will try to improve and organize the existing body of knowledge on this topic to help future hotel and destination managers to better deal with the mounting environmental complexity.

One of the problems in post-earthquake disaster management in developing countries, such as Iran, is the prediction of the residual network available for disaster relief operations. Therefore, it is important to use methods that are executable in such countries given the limited amount of accurate data. The purpose of this paper is to present a multi-objective model that seeks to determine the set of roads of a transportation network that should preserve its role in carrying out disaster relief operations (i.e. known as “emergency road network” (ERN)) in the aftermath of earthquakes.

In this paper, the total travel time of emergency trips, the total length of network and the provision of coverage to the emergency demand/supply points have been incorporated as three important metrics of ERN into a multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model. The proposed model has been solved by adopting the e-constraint method.

The results of applying the model to Tehran’s highway network indicated that the least possible length for the emergency transportation network is about half the total length of its major roads (freeways and major arterials).

Gathering detailed data about origin-destination pair of emergency trips and network characteristics have a direct effect on designing a suitable emergency network in pre-disaster phase.

To become solvable in a reasonable time, especially in large-scale cases, the problem has been modeled based on a decomposing technique. The model has been solved successfully for the emergency roads of Tehran within about 10 min of CPU time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the three-dimensional natural convection and entropy generation in a cuboid enclosure filled with two immiscible fluids of nanofluid and air.

One surface of the enclosure is jagged and another one is smooth. The finite volume approach is applied for computation. There are two partially side heaters. Furthermore, the Navier–Stokes equations and entropy generation formulation are solved in the 3D form.

The effects of different governing parameters, such as the jagged surface (JR=0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08, 0.12 and 0.16), Rayleigh number (10³⩽Ra⩽10⁶) and solid volume fraction of nanofluid (φ=1, 1.5, 2 vol%), on the fluid flow, temperature field, Nusselt number, volumetric entropy generation and Bejan number are presented, comprehensively. The results indicate that the average Nusselt number increases with the increase in the Rayleigh number and solid volume fraction of nanofluid. Moreover, the flow structure is significantly affected by the jagged surface.

The originality of this work is to analyze the natural-convection fluid flow and heat transfer under the influence of jagged surfaces of electrodes in high-current lead–acid batteries.

The Iranian patients’ rights charter defines patient rights as a reflection of fundamental human rights in the field of medicine and incorporates all elements of patient rights accepted in international texts. The purpose of this paper is to study the way in which diabetes patients’ rights are being exercised in everyday hospital practice in Birjand, Iran.

A cross-sectional study design was used in 2014. The sample size was estimated 150 patients, out of which 108 diabetes patients completed questionnaire. The questionnaire of diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights was used to collect data. The questionnaire consists of 22 questions. Data entry and analysis were carried out using SPSS software (version 22). Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated with all survey items and total scores, as well as demographic data.

The response rate was 72 percent. Overall, the mean score percentage of diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights was 74.04± 8.4. Furthermore, statistical significant differences were found among diabetes patients in relation to patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights according to highest level of education (F=16.52, p=0.002), their habitat(t=3.49, p=0.001), age groups (F=18.70, p=0.0001) and the duration of the disease (F=5.16, p=0.007). The results showed that no statistically significant differences were observed among diabetes patients in relation to diabetes patients’ perspectives on the patients’ rights according to their gender (F=1.57, p=0.12) and marital status (F=1.56, p=0.09).

Clinicians can provide care based on patients’ rights, and their knowledge of patients’ rights needs to be evaluated. Educational courses, leaflets, booklets and posters can be helpful in this regard. In addition, professional organizations and the Ministry of Health need to be more sensitive to this issue.