Most Popular Books by Mike Wright

A largely neglected question in the literature on private equity investing is how the competitive environment influences the activities of private equity firms. In this study, we examine the impact of market concentration and interfirm networking through syndication on the price private equity firms pay to acquire investment targets. As such, we provide insights on the sources of returns in the private equity market. We test our hypotheses by studying the price private equity firms pay to acquire buyout targets using a unique hand-collected dataset of UK buyout transactions in the period 1993 to 2002. Our results show that lower levels of market concentration in the market for private equity increase the price private equity investors pay to acquire target firms. Our results did not indicate a consistent effect from the extent of interfirm networking through syndication. Implications for theory and practice are suggested.

This paper introduces the special themed section on organizational interactions involving universities and firms that result in the commercialization of research and technology. Our objective is to shed light on some of the most vexing, yet under-researched predicaments research institutions encounter, despite their best efforts to advance commercialization. First, we synthesize and extend recent studies, including the papers in the special themed section. Next, we develop a taxonomy of modes of commercialization. Specifically, we consider internal approaches, quasi-internal approaches (e.g. incubators), university research parks, regional clusters, academic spin-offs and start-ups, licensing, contract research and consultancy, corporate venture capital, and open science and innovation. We also identify areas for further research at the individual (e.g. heterogeneity of entrepreneurial teams and experience; incentives), organizational and intra-university (e.g. corporate governance; nature of growth strategies; relationships with trading partners; boundary spanning activities) and technology levels (e.g. institutional context; reconfiguration of technology; valuation of technology).

Research-based spin-offs (RBSOs) have become an important aspect of the technology transfer process. Emanating from what is conventionally a non-commercial environment, RBSOs pose major challenges if they are to realise their potential to meet the objectives of their founders and the parent research organisations (PROs) from which they emerge. An important issue is to understand the heterogeneity of RBSOs. This paper reviews the literature on RBSO typologies to develop a taxonomy of RBSOs. We identify common themes in relation to these typologies in relation to (1) spin-off creation and (2) spin-off development. The dimensions that differentiate between firms are the type of resources, the business model and the institutional link. We identify gaps in current typologies in order to propose avenues for future conceptual and empirical research.

"There has been a substantial rise in the number of entrepreneurship courses and programs at colleges and universities. Despite the rapid rise of undergraduate entrepreneurship, there have been few academic studies of this phenomenon. Little is known about the antecedents and consequences of these activities. Student Start-Ups: The New Landscape of Academic Entrepreneurship is the first book of its kind on student entrepreneurship. It sets out to provide a structured approach to understanding the development of the phenomenon by synthesizing and offering the best available quantitative data and new case studies from a range of countries and universities. In doing so, they present the evolution of different models of student entrepreneurship with insights and implications for practice, policy and research"--

Perspectives relating to agency theory, information asymmetries and game theory were utilized to explore two outcomes associated with the management buy-out (MBO) or management buy-in (MBI) of former private firms: whether information was shared equally between vendors (i.e., family firm owners) and purchasers (i.e., MBO/I management teams) and whether a mutually agreed price was agreed. With reference to the themes of company ownership structure, governance structure and company objectives several hypotheses were derived. Survey evidence was gathered from the managers of 114 former private family-owned firms located across Europe that recently reported an MBO/I. Multiple logistic regression analysis detected that respondents in founded (first generation) family firms and those reporting a high focus on the strategic importance of the market value increment were more likely to report that "information was shared equally between vendors and purchasers." Respondents reporting no suitable successor had been identified, a high focus on the strategic importance of the market value increment, and the involvement of venture capitalists in succession planning were more likely to report that a mutually agreed sale price had been negotiated. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

Using a novel, hand-collected dataset, comprising 321 exited buyouts in the UK in the period 1995 to 2004, this study examines the realised value increase in exited leveraged buyouts. Testing the free cash flow theory, we show that value increase and return characteristics are related to corporate governance mechanisms resulting from a leveraged buyout. Furthermore, we show that return characteristics and the relation between buyout governance mechanisms, gearing, number of participants in equity syndicate and level of managerial ownership are related to size of buyout. We find that there exists a balance of interrelated governance mechanisms and deviations from this balance result in lower value increase.

In this article we reflect on our time as editors of JMS during the period 2003-09. First we describe the context as we saw it on assuming editorship of the Journal and the actions that we took to improve the quality of scholarship published in the journal in order to set JMS on the trajectory to become a world-leading Journal. We articulate our view of what quality means in this context and observe that we eschewed the USA-Europe divide. Rather, to be publishable, all papers had to meet the highest standards relative to their epistemological assumptions. Finally, we address two important challenges facing the Journal, and indeed management research in general, and consider what they mean for the future of JMS, notably in relation to open access publishing and to provide greater practical relevance. We conclude that the latter represents a swing of the pendulum towards the kinds of papers published in the early years of JMS but that recent developments in JMS provide new conceptual frameworks and empirical methods that contribute to enhanced insights for practice.

The existence of definite organizational goals is a longstanding and central premise in organization and management research, yet a re-examination of this body of knowledge is timely and long overdue. Many important aspects of organizational goals have received very fragmented attention, and there has been little prior attempt to synthesize and compare the effects of these different goals on firm behavior and performance. The authors present a review of existing theoretical and empirical evidence on organizational goals, and develop an analytical framework emphasizing the variety of organizational goals, their attributes, antecedents and outcomes, the role of context and feedback loops. Drawing on this framework, the authors set out an agenda for further research aimed at advancing current understanding of organizational goals and implications for firm behavior and performance.

The paper investigates the factors that influence the decision to change the status of a publicly quoted company to that of a private company. We find that firms that go private are more likely to have higher CEO ownership and higher institutional ownership. In relation to their board structures, firms going private tend to have more duality but there is no statistical difference in the proportion of non-executive directors. They do not show signs of having excess free cash flows but there is some evidence of lower growth opportunities. We do not find that firms going private experience a greater threat of hostile acquisition. The results are therefore consistent with incentive and monitoring explanations of going private. Calculation of the probability of going private shows that incentive effects are stronger than the monitoring effects.