The art of building trust via e-communication channels: Post-acquisition integration as a special context

This study discusses the importance of establishing trust in post-acquisition integration context and how the use of e-channels facilitates or inhibits this process. The objective of this study is to analyze how the use of electronic communication channels influences the post-acquisition integration process in terms of trust establishment and overall integration efficiency, developing a framework as a result. Three sub-objectives are introduced: to find out the building blocks of trust in M&A’s, to analyse how the use of e-channels influence the process of trust establishment in post-acquisition integration context, and to define the consequences trust and use of e-channels have for the process. The theoretical background of the study includes literature and theories relating to trust establishment in post-acquisition integration context and how the use of e-channels influences the process of trust development on a general level. The empirical research is conducted as a single case study, based on key informant interviews. The interview data was collected between October 2015 and January 2016. Altogether nine interviews were realised; six with representatives from the acquiring firm and three with target firm members. Thematic analysis was selected as the main method for analysing and processing the qualitative data. This study finds that trust has an essential role in post-acquisition integration context, facilitating the integration process in various different ways. Hence, identifying the different building blocks of trust is important in order for members of the organisations to be better able establish and maintain trust. In today’s international business, the role of electronic communication channels has also increased in importance significantly and it was confirmed that these pose both challenges and possibilities for the development of interpersonal trust. One of the most important underlying factors influencing the trust levels via e-communication channels is the level of user’s comfort in using the different e-channels. Without sufficient and meaningful training, the communication conducted via these channels in inhibited in a number of ways. Hence, understanding the defining characteristics of e-communication together with the risks and opportunities related to the use of these can have far-reaching consequences for the post-acquisition integration process as a whole. The framework based on the findings and existing theory introduces the most central factors influencing the trust establishment together with the positive and negative consequences these have for the integration process. Moreover, organizational level consistency and the existence of shared guidelines on appropriate selection of communication channels according to the nature of the task at hand are seen as important

Hierarchy and Expansiveness in Two-Dimensional Subshifts of Finite Type

Subshifts are sets of configurations over an infinite grid defined by a set of forbidden patterns. In this thesis, we study two-dimensional subshifts offinite type (2D SFTs), where the underlying grid is Z2 and the set of for-bidden patterns is finite. We are mainly interested in the interplay between the computational power of 2D SFTs and their geometry, examined through the concept of expansive subdynamics. 2D SFTs with expansive directions form an interesting and natural class of subshifts that lie between dimensions 1 and 2. An SFT that has only one non-expansive direction is called extremely expansive. We prove that in many aspects, extremely expansive 2D SFTs display the totality of behaviours of general 2D SFTs. For example, we construct an aperiodic extremely expansive 2D SFT and we prove that the emptiness problem is undecidable even when restricted to the class of extremely expansive 2D SFTs. We also prove that every Medvedev class contains an extremely expansive 2D SFT and we provide a characterization of the sets of directions that can be the set of non-expansive directions of a 2D SFT. Finally, we prove that for every computable sequence of 2D SFTs with an expansive direction, there exists a universal object that simulates all of the elements of the sequence. We use the so called hierarchical, self-simulating or fixed-point method for constructing 2D SFTs which has been previously used by Ga´cs, Durand, Romashchenko and Shen.