Most Popular Books by Mike Wright

You''ve invested a lot of time, money and heart in your business. It''s successful, but imagine what it could achieve if all of the people involved thought, acted, and made decisions in the best interest of the company? The customers? Each other? Building a Culture of Responsibility: How to Raise--And Reinforce--The Five Pillars of a Responsible Organization uses real-life experiences to illustrate the world-class results you can achieve by building the sustainable cultures that promote these behaviors. You will learn to: Answer the question "Why are we here?" Gain enrollment through shared values Create UNITY to succeed together in the long-term Build cohesive teams Start on the path to constant, never-ending improvements Within the pages of this book you''ll learn how to launch, support, and make permanent a powerful transformative culture that makes responsibility a daily reality for everyone in your organization.

Written by an experienced author team this student book provides detailed coverage of the AQA AS Sociology specification. Learning Objectives let students know exactly what they''ll need to learn and understand in that topic. Clear and uncomplicated language with key terms defined. Difficult concepts are explained clearly through full colour diagrams and photographs. Research methods contextualised.

This case study examines the motivations and barriers to small firm internationalization. The entrepreneurs human and reputational capital, experience and knowledge are leveraged to address barriers. An e-business platform strategy is illustrated. At a secondary level, the case also demonstrates the challenges inherent in revitalizing family businesses over generations of ownership.

An in-depth report and guide to the venture capital industry in Europe covering early stage investments, LBOs, MBOs and MBIs.

The scope and purpose of this special issue is to draw interconnections between domains of strategy and strategic management research. Specifically, we initially conceptualized this special issue with two goals in mind: (1) to highlight and bridge intersections between strategy theories and bodies of scholarship; and (2) to advance and mainstream ways in which an explicit organizational dimension can be fostered in strategy and strategic management research. The papers selected for the issue capture this set of aspirations in various ways, and, as such, they collectively offer a foundation for extending strategy and strategic management research in exciting new directions. We start our introduction by providing a brief overview of the contributions provided by each paper in the context of three broad strategy themes: strategy and process; resources and organizational growth; and environment and institutional context. We subsequently discuss the potential for integration of research across these themes, and highlight the importance of what we define as bridging and umbrella constructs that are able to connect various strategy and organizational phenomena in coherent and meaningful ways. We elaborate the important distinction between these two constructs and their respective roles within theory development, and use that to drive and articulate directions for further research.

We present an analysis of the articles published in the Journal of Management Studies since its inception to assess to what extent JMS has: maintained its leading international ranking; maintained its founding mission as a broad based management journal; and remained a broad based management journal compared to other general management journals. In terms of its impact factor and citations despite reaching a low point in 2001, we find that JMS today ranks higher than it has ever done throughout its 50-year history. From our content analysis covering the life-cycle of JMS, we find four areas have been the most frequently represented, although their relative importance varies between decades: Organizational Management/Behaviour, Strategy, Human Resource Management, and General Management, accounting for 67 per cent of articles published over the period. JMS has strengthened its international author distribution through the increase in authors from the EU especially; the period 2000-04 which saw the predominance of UK authors was an anomaly. There are marked differences between type of article and author country of origin. Our comparative analysis of the word networks between the journals JMS, AMJ, ASQ, and HRM shows that over each decade the papers in the first three normally form a single cluster, indicating that the words used in the papers in the different journals are similar, while papers from HRM often form an outlining group. Notably, in the early 2000s papers in JMS form a distinct cluster, with papers from HRM paralleling the anomaly identified in the content analysis. Overall, JMS has regained its distinctiveness as a broad-based international management journal, not favouring any particular theoretical or empirical approach.

Broad characteristics, behavior, and performancecontributions relating to experienced serial and portfolio entrepreneurs areanalyzed in comparison to novice entrepreneurs with no prior business ownershipexperience. Data consisted of 354 firms owned by novice (200 firms), serial (66firms), and portfolio (88 firms) entrepreneurs in Scotland. Results indicate no significant difference among the three groups withregard to the mode of acquisition of equity stake, number of equity partners,current age, location of business, main industrial activity of the business, orwhether the business was a family firm. Significant differences are noted inthe characteristics and behavior of the entrepreneurs with regard to theirbusiness ownership experience. Further analyses show that portfolio entrepreneurs are more likely to bemotivated by the generation of wealth and exhibit higher levels of growth intheir own businesses. Additionally, they exhibit more diverse experiences andhave more resources than serial or novice entrepreneurs. Serial entrepreneursare concerned with independence and autonomy and have exited more businessesthan portfolio entrepreneurs. Conversely, novice entrepreneurs look for secure incomes and are hesitant tolose their independence in pursuit of rapid business growth. It is evident thatexperienced entrepreneurs offer more wealth creation prospects and accumulateseveral entrepreneurial resources, both of which are fundamental for thesuccess of a firm. (NEE).

Using a sample of 236 UK companies that went from public to private (PTP) company status during 1997 to 2005 and a control sample of similar firms not going private, we study, with logistic regression methodology, the impact of bankruptcy risk measured by their default probability, estimated using stock market data and option pricing models, on the going private decision. We also examine value gains to existing shareholders of target companies of PTP transactions. Fama-French 3 factor event study approach is used to estimate the abnormal returns around the announcement period. We find that going private companies have significantly higher default probability. They also have fewer growth opportunities, lower stock market valuation, poorer operating performance and larger pre-PTP management holding. These companies are usually small in size, suffer stock market neglect and are undervalued. Weak corporate governance factors increase the chances of going private. We report a cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of 15% for a 7 day announcement period for firms subject to going private. These returns are higher for target firms faced with higher bankruptcy risk suggesting a strong turnaround motivation for the PTP deal. Private equity firms sponsoring PTPs generate higher shareholder value gains when they acquire firms with poorer growth record, higher risk of bankruptcy and larger free cash flow suggesting they are not deterred by the risk of financial distress but consider it a value creating opportunity. High bankruptcy risk at going private increases the chance the target will end up in receivership.

This paper investigates how far UK public to private transactions can be explained by financial distress costs or incentive realignment. We find that firms going private are more likely to be smaller, more diversified, younger and have lower Q ratios than firms remaining public. The results therefore offer limited support for both theories. We also find that private equity providers are more likely to be involved in the process if the firm going private is more diversified and has a higher Q ratio. This suggests that private equity providers are more interested in growth prospects than potential financial distress costs.

By combining insights from relational network theory and agency theory we identify the boundary conditions to the embeddedness approach to partner selection decisions in interfirm collaborations. Employing a longitudinal dataset comprising the investment syndicates for the population of UK management buyouts between 1993 and 2003, we find that relational embeddedness is less important for selecting partners when agency risks are low, allowing firms to expand their networks. Furthermore, reputational capital may act as a partial substitute for relational embeddedness, again permitting firms to expand their networks. Our findings enhance understanding of the boundary conditions associated with the relational network approach to partner selections and network behaviour.