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This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist.

This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos.

Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible.

Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.

Current covid-19 pandemic challenges health-care ethics. Ones of the most important challenges are medical resources allocation and a duty to treat, often addressed to medical personnel. This paper suggests that there are good reasons to rethink our health-care ethics for future global catastrophic risks. Current pandemic shows how challenging can be an issue of resources allocation even in a relatively small kind of catastrophic event such as covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, the authors show that any future existential bigger catastrophe may require new guidelines for the allocation of medical resources. The idea of assisted dying is considered as a hypothetical scenario.

This is a conceptual work based on conceptual analysis at the intersection of risk studies, health-care ethics and future studies. This study builds the argument on the assumption that the covid-19 pandemic should be treated as a sort of global catastrophic risk. Findings show that there are no such attempts in currently published peer-reviewed academic literature. This is crucial concept for the meta-analysis. This study shows why and how current pandemic can be interpreted in terms of global catastrophic risk even if, literally, covid-19 does not meet all criteria required in the risk studies to be called a global catastrophe.

We can expect an emergence of discriminatory selection policy which will require some actions taken by future patients like, for example, genetic engineering. But even then it is inevitable that there will still be a large number of survivors who require medical assistance, which they have no chance of receiving. This is why this study has considered the concept of assisted dying understood as an official protocol for health-care ethics and resources allocation policy in the case of emergency situations. Possibly more controversial idea discussed in this paper is an idea of assisted dying for those who cannot receive required medical help. Such procedure could be applied in a mass-scale during a global catastrophic event.

Philosophers and ethicists should identify and study all possible pros and cons of this discrimination rule. As this study’s findings suggested above, a reliable point of reference is the concept of substantial human enhancement. Human enhancement as such, widely debated, should be studied in that specific context of discrimination of patients in an access to limited medical resources. Last but not least, scientific community should study the concept of assisted dying which could be applied for those survivors who have no chance of obtaining medical care. Such criteria and concepts as cost-benefit analysis, the ethics of quality of life, autonomy of patients and duty of medical personnel should be considered.

Politicians and policymakers should prepare protocols for global catastrophes where these discrimination criteria would have to be applied. The same applies to the development of medical robotics aimed at replacing human health-care personnel. We assume that this is important implication for practical policy in healthcare. Our prediction, however plausible, is not a good scenario for humanity. But given this realistic development trajectory, we should do everything possible to prevent the need for the discriminatory rules in medical care described above.

This study offers the idea of assisted dying as a health-care policy in emergency situations. The authors expect that next future global catastrophes – looking at the current pandemic only as a mild prelude – will force a radical change in moral values and medical standards. New criteria of selection and discrimination will be perceived as much more exclusivist and unfair than criteria applied today.

In order to overcome potential limitations in their own experience with a strategic action, firms will often outsource to expert firms that have greater experience with such actions. In this study, the authors contribute to theory on organizational experience and learning by examining an important but understudied type of experience – outsourced experience. The authors show whether, and under what conditions, such experience may be beneficial for focal firms. In the context of acquisitions, the authors find that outsourced acquisition experience brought to acquisition deals by advisors is typically assessed by markets to be detrimental but may become beneficial if such experience is specific to the acquirer’s context. Further, the authors find that acquirers’ own knowledge can signal that they are less reliant on advisor experience, thus mitigating its potentially harmful effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

This chapter examines the use of signaling mechanism to identify promising acquisition targets. It draws on the importance of inter-organizational relationships of target firms and their relevance as signals of firm quality. It takes into account two types of inter-organizational relationships, alliances and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments. It further identifies the boundary conditions that are most likely to influence the acquisition decision of the acquirer. These are based on the characteristics of target firms and their partners. By considering the role of CVC investments and alliances as signals of firm quality, the study draws a connection between how the different types of equity and non-equity relationships of firms influence the acquirer’s choice of potential takeover target.

The theoretical frame based on the signaling perspective provides fresh and valuable insights to evaluate the quality of target firms. The research provides directions for future opportunities to examine the value of signals and whether such signals create synergies in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals. The author identifies new avenues of research that would help to move forward the signaling perspective in the literature on M&A.

Extant research posits that mergers and acquisition (M&As) do not create value. Still many firms adopt expansion strategies such as alliances, joint ventures (JVs), and M&As to grow and enhance their performance. Through performing a meta-analysis on 204 papers that assess the relationship between the three most prevalent expansion strategies formed by firms, alliances, JVs, and M&As and their different substantive and symbolic performance effects, this study contributes in two ways. First, it becomes clear that alliances and M&As enhance a firm’s substantive performance, while no positive performance effect is observed for JVs. In turn, all three expansion strategies boost a firm’s symbolic performance in terms of its legitimacy and status. Second, a distinction between their effects on a firm’s substantive performance in terms of their market-based and accounting-based performance shows that alliances and M&As both positively contribute to a firm’s accounting-based performance, while only the former spurs a firm’s market-based returns. This indicates that M&As have more long-term accounting-based performance effects compared to alliances and JVs, which suggests that in the long-term firms do best by expanding through M&As.

This paper undertakes an empirical analysis of the impact of absorbed and unabsorbed slack, employing three different measures for each slack type, on firm profitability. We find that unabsorbed slack has a more favorable influence on future firm profitability than absorbed slack. While all the absorbed slack indicators have a significant negative influence on future profitability, the three unabsorbed slack indicators present positive, negative, and non-significant influences, respectively. The fewer constraints of unabsorbed slack on the redeployment to exploit new opportunities point to its comparative advantage over absorbed slack. We find evidence for the differential impact of absorbed versus unabsorbed slack on profitability in firms with lower levels of slack, which suggests firms prefer to withdraw resources from current business and redeploy them to develop new and more favorable business opportunities.

Increasingly, companies are using alliances and joint ventures to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. These collaborations are voluntary arrangements between two or more firms that exchange, share, bundle, and create resources in pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities. This paper proposes that the innovativeness and risk characteristics of these entrepreneurial collaborations significantly influence the outcomes that partner firms realize. Furthermore, interfirm trust works to moderate the effects of these characteristics and allows partners to effectively manage these arrangements. Using data from a sample of alliances and joint ventures engaged in new product development in the telecommunications, medical, and electronics industries, we empirically test the effects of these characteristics on partner satisfaction and partnership success.

In this study we investigated the effects of news reports on acquirer short-term performance. Our focus was on the extent to which key deal characteristics – the type of deal, during a merger wave or not or the presence of a significant premium – are made explicit. Moreover, we looked for the effect of the assessment of the deal characteristics by different key informants: board members, top management team members, and analysts. Configurations derived using the set-theoretic approach suggest that media-transmitted signals form complex interrelations among content and informant. We found that investors react positively to deals that are surrounded by unequivocal signals of synergy potential: they contain explicitly stated deal characteristics as well as deal endorsements from the boards and/or top management of acquirer and target companies. Analysts’ assessments of the deals seem to bear little influence on investor reaction. Meanwhile, investors react negatively to deals with low or absent media coverage as well as deals surrounded by signals of ambiguous synergy potential.