Suchergebnisse

Mergers are common occurrences reshaping the competitive landscape in many industries. Traditionally, merger analysis has focused on the impact of the merger on price. However, price analysis ignores the other half of the value proposition for customers, namely, the quality of the product or service being offered. The authors argue that merger analysis must fully incorporate quality considerations in order to understand how customers will be affected by the merger. Some mergers will promote quality, while other mergers will inhibit quality depending on a wide variety of product, market, and customer characteristics. In order to guide merger analysts in incorporating quality considerations, the authors provide a detailed framework for answering why, what, when, and how quality should be considered in merger analysis.

An inductive study of improvisation in new product development activities in two firms uncovered a variety of improvisational forms and the factors that shaped them. Embedded in the observations were two important linkages between organizational improvisation and learning. First, site observations led us to refine prior definitions of improvisation and view it as a distinct type of real-time, short-term learning. Second, observation revealed links between improvisation and long-term organizational learning. Improvisation interfered with some learning processes; it also sometimes played a role in long-term trial-and-error learning, and the firms displayed improvisational competencies. Our findings extend prior research on organizational improvisation and learning and provide a lens for research on entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and the fusion of unplanned change and order.