Exequiel Hernandez, jens friedmann, Emilie Feldman, Putting Strategy Back into Corporate Strategy: Sequences of Alliances, Acquisitions, and Divestitures.
Emilie Feldman, Raffi Amit, Siwen Chen (2024), Hedge Fund Activism in Family Firms, Strategic Management Journal.
Abstract: This article examines the antecedents and outcomes of hedge fund activism in family versus nonfamily firms. We find that activist hedge funds are less likely to initiate campaigns against family firms than nonfamily firms, but the cumulative abnormal returns to announcements of campaigns against family firms exceed those of nonfamily firms. The presence of one or more family members on a firm's board of directors appears to be a key impediment to hedge fund activism in family firms. Additionally, activist hedge funds are more likely to use hostile tactics and demand more substantive changes in their campaigns against family firms than nonfamily firms. Together, these findings contribute to the agency theory-based literatures on hedge fund activism, family firms, boards of directors, and corporate governance.
Valentina Assenova, Emilie Feldman, Lori Rosenkopf (Working), Conflicts of interest reduce the diffusion of microfinance.
Abstract: Existing studies on innovation diffusion in networks have established that the high network connectivity of “central” actors increases diffusion. However, this research has not accounted for the possibility that the multiple connections of central actors could generate conflicts of interest that impede diffusion. Using data from a prominent field experiment that revealed the usual association between the centrality of “community leaders” tasked with promoting microfinance and its subsequent diffusion, we document a negative relationship between leaders’ lending relationships and microfinance diffusion. That is, leaders who lend are less inclined to promote microfinance because doing so could compromise the returns from their lending relationships. Our analyses show that leaders with conflicts of interest are less effective conduits for innovation diffusion than their centrality might predict.
Emilie Feldman, Divestitures: Creating Value through Strategy, Structure, and Implementation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2023)
Emilie Feldman and Exequiel Hernandez (2022), Synergy in Mergers and Acquisitions: Typology, Lifecycles, and Value, Academy of Management Review, 47 (4), pp. 549-578.
Abstract: Value in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) derives from the synergistic combination of an acquirer and a target. We advance the existing conceptualization of synergies in three ways. First, we develop a theoretically-motivated, parsimonious typology of five distinct sources of synergy based on two underlying dimensions: the level of analysis at which valuable activities occur and the orientation by which those activities are governed. The typology uncovers three novel synergy sources (relational, network, and non-market) arising from acquisition-induced changes in firms’ external cooperative environments, and classifies two other well-known synergies (internal and market power). Second, we introduce the concept of synergy lifecycles to explore how the timing of initial realization and the duration of gains vary across the five synergies, based on differences in the post-merger integration required and in the control the acquirer has over the assets and activities combined by the merger. Third, we consider how the synergy types interact, yielding co-synergies when they complement each other and dis-synergies when they substitute for one other. This enables us to expand the traditional conceptualization of the total value created by M&A as the sum of each of the synergy types, their co-synergies, and their dis-synergies.
Emilie Feldman and Arkadiy V. Sakhartov (2022), Resource Redeployment and Divestiture as Strategic Alternatives, Organization Science, 33 (3), pp. 926-945.
Abstract: What should the managers of a multi-business firm do when their company’s resources are not used profitably? Research on redeployment proposes that managers should withdraw those resources from the business where they are underutilized and switch them to a business where they can be used more profitably, whereas the literature on divestiture advocates that managers should divest the business containing those resources. In this study, we investigate the factors that lead managers to choose resource redeployment over divestiture as a mode of exit, and vice versa. Using a formal model, we establish that the two exit modes act as intertemporal substitutes, whereby redeployment dominates for earlier exits but divestiture dominates for later exits. Although both redeployment and divestiture are inversely related to their implementation costs, redeployment costs amplify the effect of divestiture costs on the likelihood of exit, and divestiture costs amplify the effect of redeployment costs on the likelihood of exit. Finally, we derive a series of results that show that disregarding one of these two exit options as a strategic alternative to the other may lead to misspecifications of empirical models that seek to predict the likelihood of redeployment, divestiture, or exit. Overall, our work contributes to the corporate strategy literature by uniting two streams of research that have largely remained disparate, yet whose insights have significant implications for each other.
Emilie Feldman and Arkadiy V. Sakhartov (2021), Prospective on Corporate Renewal, Strategic Management Review, 2 (2), pp. 193-204.
Abstract: This essay introduces the Strategic Management Review Special Issue on Corporate Renewal. Following Hofer and Schendel (1978), we define corporate renewal as a type of strategic renewal
that is concerned with the processes and outcomes of changes in the scope and resource deployments among a firm’s businesses. We introduce a three-part framework for corporate renewal that highlights the choice among various modes of corporate renewal, the different actors who can implement corporate renewal, and the processes that are involved in the execution of corporate renewal. We draw upon this organizing framework to categorize the essays contained in this volume and to outline potential directions for future research on corporate renewal.
Emilie Feldman, “Restructuring and Divestitures”. In Strategic Management: State of the Field and Its Future, edited by Irene Duhaime, Michael Hitt, and Marjorie Lyles, (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Abstract: Divestitures are major corporate restructuring transactions that narrow firm boundaries by removing one or more of a company’s businesses, subsidiaries, or divisions. Globally, divestitures account for about 30-40% of overall deal-making activity and create more than double the shareholder value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), their expansionary counterparts. Yet, restructuring and divestitures have been relatively understudied in the field of management. In this chapter, I present an agenda for research into the phenomena of restructuring and divestitures by surveying past and current literature about them and laying out some productive directions for future research in this domain. The core insight to emerge from this chapter is that although divestitures are often seen as reactive solutions to problems within organizations, these transactions are and should be viewed by managers as proactive, strategic tools that have the potential to create significant value for the companies that undertake them.
Emanuele L. M. Bettinazzi and Emilie Feldman (2021), Stakeholder Orientation and Divestiture Activity, Academy of Management Journal, 64 (4), pp. 1078-1096.
Abstract: We conceptualize divestitures as a costly alternative to the internal resolution of conflicts among stakeholders, albeit one that avoids the more costly liquidation of the firm. In firms that have lower stakeholder orientation (defined as the extent to which management focuses attention on and integrates the interests of multiple stakeholders in its decision-making), divestitures will be less costly than the internal resolution of stakeholder conflicts, while the opposite will be true in firms that have higher stakeholder orientation. Consistent with this argument, we document a negative relationship between stakeholder orientation and divestiture activity, using a unique dateset of 909 U.S.-based, publicly-listed firms from 2002 to 2015. This negative relationship is more pronounced for selloffs than for spinoffs, for selloffs of businesses that are unrelated to or located far from the divesting firm, and for selloffs to acquirers that are not alliance partners of divesting firms. The core contribution of this paper is to treat different types of divestitures as increasingly costly responses to conflicts among stakeholders, thereby populating the theoretical middle ground between negotiated adaptations of firms’ governance structures and total firm failure. In so doing, this paper contributes to research at the intersection of stakeholder theory and corporate strategy.
Emilie Feldman (2021), The Corporate Parenting Advantage, Revisited, Strategic Management Journal, 42 (1), pp. 114-143.
Abstract: This paper investigates the corporate parenting advantage, the extent to which corporate parents improve the performance of their subsidiaries. Despite the importance of this concept for corporate strategy, researchers have yet to quantify it empirically. I measure the corporate parenting advantage by comparing the performance of utilities that were legally classified into one of two types of holding companies: regulated holding companies, which faced limits on their ability to parent, and exempt holding companies, which did not. I find that observationally similar utilities that were owned by exempt holding companies outperform utilities that were owned by regulated holding companies, and that this performance differential attenuates once the legal restrictions on parenting were lifted. These results provide the first large‐scale empirical evidence of the corporate parenting advantage.
