How Formal and Informal Institutions of Middle Eastern Countries Influence Managerial Discretion: An Empirical Investigation

Managerial discretion is the focal theme bridging the clash between two schools of thoughts; whether executives have greater influence on their firms’ outcomes or other factors restrain their actions (Hambrick & Finkelstein, 1987). It is argued that constraints come from inertial, normative and environmental forces (e.g. DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Of these restraints is the institutional environment in which a firm is headquartered. Our paper falls within this research stream and provides an extension for Crossland and Hambrick (2007, 2011) work. We investigate the national level of discretion in new cross-cultural contexts, provide deeper understanding of its concept, and shed the light on undiscovered discretion’s antecedents and consequences. We adopt a quantitative approach in which questionnaires represent our data collection instrument. We anticipate that in high discretion countries firms tend to follow what Miles & Snow (1978) labeled ‘Prospector’ strategy as opposed to low discretion countries in which firms incline to implement a ‘Defender’ strategy.

Long-term performance of mergers and acquisitions in ASEAN countries

The study looks at mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in ASEAN countries and examines the post-M&A performance using data from 2001 to 2012. The industry-adjusted operating performance tends to decline in the 3 years following an M&A. Yet, the results suggest that M&As completed during the financial crisis are more profitable than those implemented before and/or after the crisis. We argue that this is mainly due to the synergies created between the firms’ resources during the crisis which augur well for firms’ economic performance. We find that, during the crisis, certain characteristics of the firms like the relative size of the target, cross-border nature of deals, acquirer's cash reserves and friendly nature of deals are important determinants of long-term post-M&A operating performance. However, for M&As during the crisis, there appears to be no relationship between performance and firms’ characteristics linked to M&A activity such as payment method, industry relatedness and percentage of target's share acquired.

Assessing the influence of the Responsibility to Protect on the UN Security Council during the Arab Spring

This article challenges those perspectives which assert first, that the Security Council’s engagement with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) during the Arab Spring evidences a generally positive trend, and second, that the response to the Arab Spring, particularly Syria, highlights the need for veto restraint. With respect to the first point, the evidence presented in this article suggests that the manner in which R2P has been employed by the Security Council during this period evidences three key trends: first, a willingness to invoke R2P only in the context of Pillar I; second, a pronounced lack of consensus surrounding Pillar III; and third, the persistent prioritisation of national interests over humanitarian concerns. With respect to veto restraint, this article argues that there is no evidence that this idea will have any significant impact on decision-making at the Security Council; the Council’s response to the Arab Spring suggests that national interests continue to trump humanitarian need.