Klaus Uhlenbruck

The Impact of Corruption on Entry Strategy: Evidence from Telecommunication Projects in Emerging Economies

With globalization and the growth in emerging economies, multinational enterprises (MNEs) now frequently confront challenges associated with corrupt governments. Already, a growing body of research has demonstrated that corruption significantly reduces a countrys aggregate inflows of foreign direct investment through its effects on firm performance. We move the analysis of corruption from aggregate financial flows toward managerial theory and practice by examining how firms adjust their strategy for entering foreign markets in corrupt environments and how different types of corruption affect firms choices. Building on institutional theory, we predict that MNEs will respond to pervasive and arbitrary corruption in a host country by selecting particular types of equity and nonequity modes of entry. Using data on 220 telecommunications development projects in 64 emerging economies, we find that firms adapt to the pressures of corruption via short-term contracting and entry into joint ventures. We also find that the arbitrariness surrounding corrupt transactions has a significant impact on firms decisions, in addition to the overall level of corruption. In contrast to extant research, we show that MNEs use nonequity-entry modes or partnering as an adaptive strategy to participate in markets despite the presence of corruption.

Organizational Transformation in Transition Economies: Resource‐based and Organizational Learning Perspectives

The capitalist and socialist societies of the twentieth century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

Foreign Acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe: Outcomes of Privatization in Transitional Economies

This study of entry into Central and Eastern Europe via acquisition of privatized firms combines a traditional merger approach with consideration of host governments as critical stakeholders and th...

Is Nepotism Good or Bad? Types of Nepotism and Implications for Knowledge Management

In contrast to the literature that portrays nepotism as generally problematic, we develop a conceptual model to explain why some family firms benefit from nepotism while others do not. We distinguish two types of nepotism based on how nepots are chosen. We elaborate the differences between entitlement nepotism and reciprocal nepotism. We propose that reciprocal (vs. entitlement) nepotism is associated with three family conditions that indicate generalized (vs. restricted) social exchange relationships between family members. We also suggest that generalized social exchanges are valuable to firms because they facilitate tacit knowledge management that can lead to competitive advantage.

The Transformation Into Entrepreneurial Firms: Examining the Context of Privatization

This paper builds upon the growing research on both privatization and entrepreneurship and provides a model to predict outcomes of privatization of state‐owned enterprises. Previous research has concentrated on the change in ownership as the principal driver of post‐privatization increases in firm performance and wealth creation. We suggest that structural conditions of the state‐owned enterprise and the privatization process, in combination with characteristics of the new owners, lead to performance changes because they determine the firm’s ability to transform from a state agency to an entrepreneurial organization.

Rivals’ reactions to mergers and acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions research has principally focused on attributes of the acquiring firm and post-acquisition outcomes. To extend our knowledge, we focus on external factors, in particular rival responses, and explore when and how rivals respond to their competitor’s acquisitions. Leveraging the awareness–motivation–capability framework, we predict and find evidence that a rival’s dependence on markets in common with the acquirer, resource similarity between rival and acquirer, and a rival’s organizational slack increase the volume and, in some cases, also the complexity of a rival’s competitive actions following an acquisition. Furthermore, the type of acquisition positively moderates some of these relationships. The results extend our understanding of the influence of mergers and acquisitions on competitive dynamics in the marketplace.

Pay Disparity, External Pay Alternatives and Turnover of the Second Best Paid Executive

We contribute to the intersection of top executive turnover and compensation research by investigating pay structure implications on turnover, focusing on the second best-paid executive as the one being closest to winning the tournament for the best-paid position. Building on tournament theory and using competing-risks survival regression, we develop and test hypotheses with regard to the effects of pay disparity among a firm’s top executives and external pay alternatives on the exit of the second best-paid executive. For a sample of S&P 500 firms in the 14-year period between 1993 and 2006, we find that comparisons with higher paid executives and external pay alternatives matter for individuals’ decisions whether to stay in or to leave a pay tournament, whereas comparisons to lower paid executives do not.

Configurations and Performance: The Role of Complementarities in the Design of Law Firms

Despite the theoretical appeal of configurational approaches, little empirical research to date has found a clear relationship between configuration membership and firm performance. In this paper, we argue that complementarities among strategic and structural characteristics establish configurations and account for performance differences between firms. We analyze a panel data set of US law firms from the period of 1992-1999, using a fuzzy clustering approach to measure the firms’ affiliation to theoretically derived configurations. The results show that the degree to which firms conform to these complementarity-driven configurations has a significant positive effect on their performance.