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M&A success and synergies are regularly discussed in the practical literature, but synergies are typically treated as a static concept (how do you get them?) with little discussion of financial bet acquirers create in paying an up-front premium. We describe the importance of investor reactions, the nature of the challenge, and discuss synergies as a process with five rules of the road covering M&A strategy, diligence, culture, leakage, and validation and reporting. Potential acquirers must be better prepared before they commit these major capital investments, involving multiple stakeholders throughout the process of creating the value they are promising with M&A.

We report the important results of our 24-year study on acquirer performance, the persistence of investor reactions, and the role of the acquisition premium to support our position that synergies must be trackable and defendable before and after deal announcement. From our collective author experience of advising on many hundreds of synergy programs over the years, we distilled our experience based on the common lack of understanding of what is required by executives, and when, and what we have seen greatly improve the odds of success in achieving sufficient M&A synergies.

Major findings include: 1. Initial market reactions are good predictors of the future, most deals persist, positive or negative, and there is a big spread of returns between winners and losers with losers paying the highest premiums; 2. Premiums additions to target’s growth value and may require larger performance increases than acquirers expect; 3. Synergies are a dynamic process involving multiple stakeholders from becoming a prepared acquirer in M&A strategy, building an early synergy roadmap during diligence, understanding that culture and change issues launch at announcement and preparation must begin long before, anticipating leakage, and validating and reporting post-close.

Our study is original covering three waves of mergers over 24 years; we formalize the synergy challenge created by paying a premium with respect to the already existing growth expectations for the target; we make clear that ultimately validating synergies begins with M&A strategy and diligence through to the workings of an Integration Management Office, anticipating synergy leakage, and preparing employees for change.

Northern Textiles (NTL) used highly complex derivatives to hedge its currency risk, and these structured products have been profitable in the past. But in 2008, unanticipated movements in exchange rates have led to serious losses. Seth, the Chairman of NTL, has come to know about the losses on a specific deal, but the Treasurer has ensured that he is the only person who understands the derivative book in its entirety. Though Seth is not aware of how grave the problem is, he realizes that he must review NTL's risk management policies and perhaps even replace the CFO.

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) have been shown to influence several employee outcomes positively. To extend the research, the authors examine the effect of i-deals on employees’ perceptions of organizational justice, in particular, how the relationship between employees’ own i-deals and organizational justice is affected by employees' job performance as well as their perceptions of coworkers’ i-deals.

The authors tested the theoretical model using survey data from 182 hotel employees.

Results show that i-deals are positively related to employees’ perceptions of organizational justice and that such effects are stronger among high performing employees. The effect of i-deals on organizational justice was also more pronounced among employees who viewed coworkers as having successfully negotiated i-deals.

The authors' findings suggest that organizations can benefit from providing i-deals through employees’ enhanced perceptions of organizational justice. The paper thus recommends that organizations understand the impact of providing more flexible human resources (HR) practices and customized work arrangements that are aligned with individual goals and needs. This may be particularly relevant to high performers. Furthermore, the findings suggest that organizations may want to make i-deals available to employees more widely than to just a few selected individuals.

This study is one of a few attempts that empirically investigate the relationship between i-deals and organizational justice. The findings of this study shed light on the possibility that employees develop positive justice perceptions toward employeesʼ organization based on the appreciation of the customized work arrangements granted to both themselves and others.

“NTL suffered huge losses in its foreign exchange hedging activities as its highly complex leveraged structured products backfired badly in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008. The CFO and the Treasury head have both been sacked, and Joshi, the new CFO, has embraced aggressive litigation as NTL's survival strategy to cope with the losses that threaten its solvency. In the meantime, NTL also faces tax investigations and whistleblower allegations of fraud, and it finds that the record-keeping of its derivative transactions was hopelessly incomplete and patchy. A complete reconstruction of the entire derivative transaction history is the only way to rebuild trust, and that task falls on Reddy, a seasoned derivatives expert brought in by the Board specifically for this purpose.

In this dire situation, Seth, the founder Chairman of NTL decides that NTL needs to put all this behind it and focus on rebuilding the business. The challenge for Seth, Joshi and Reddy is to go about doing this in an environment that offers very few rays of hope.”

South Africa had formally introduced a policy of inflation targeting (IT) in February 2000. By December 2001, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, after reading the latest statistics, was concerned with the disappointing economic data. Economic activity had slowed drastically, to the point that the country appeared to be heading for a recession. The gloomy statistics forced the governor to consider whether the country had pursued the right policy. Persistently high unemployment, one legacy of the apartheid era, meant that South Africa did not have the luxury of waiting for new policies to bear fruit. With the inflation forecast to exceed the mandated target, the governor would have to tighten monetary policy, which would further restrict investment. Was it is time for South Africa to change course?

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

This final chapter of this book explores the new vision set forth by the United Nations in 2021, titled ‘Our Common Agenda’. This agenda aims to provide a renewed vision and action plan for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This chapter focuses on the implications of the principle of ‘ensuring no one is left behind’ for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, with a particular focus on youth. This chapter provides a call to action for ensuring that the principle of ‘ensuring no one is left behind’ is integrated into all aspects of the 2030 Agenda. It stresses the importance of addressing the root causes of inequality and promoting inclusivity and equity in order to achieve the SDGs. This chapter provides valuable insights and guidance for policymakers, practitioners and individuals working towards a more sustainable and just future.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the influence mechanism of social innovation education (SIE) on sustainability learning outcomes and analyze the roles of intrinsic learning motivation and prosocial motivation.

A sample of 322 undergraduates from one higher education institution in Tianjin was used to test the hypotheses.

This study found that SIE positively affected sustainability learning outcomes, and intrinsic learning motivation mediated the relationship between them. The results showed that prosocial motivation positively moderates the positive effect of SIE on intrinsic learning motivation and the overall mediation model.

The findings have important practical implications for higher education institutions to carry out SIE. Higher education institutions should focus on integrating social innovation and sustainability into top-level design. Furthermore, higher education institutions should focus on stimulating students’ intrinsic learning motivation and cultivating their prosocial motivation.

This study identified the relationship between SIE and sustainability learning outcomes and clarified the influence mechanism of SIE on sustainability learning outcomes. Moreover, this study emphasized the importance of prosocial motivation as a key boundary condition of SIE.