We review theory and evidence on corporate diversification, industry structure, and firm strategy from an organizational economics perspective. First, we examine the implications of transaction cost economics (TCE) for diversification decisions. TCE is essentially a theory about the costs of...

We take a broad product markets approach to examine whether pooled purchasing is a source of value creation in diversifying acquisitions. We find that our proxies for the merging firms' change in purchasing concentration are positively related to the combined wealth effect of merging firms,...

An extensive empirical literature in strategy and finance studies the performance implications of corporate diversification. Two core debates in the literature concern the existence of a diversification discount and the relative importance of industry relatedness and market structure for the...

The purpose of this study is to extend the current understanding of business divestiture by investigating its potential for triggering strategic reorientation. A divestiture involving strategic reorientation is here denoted as a strategic business exit, otherwise it is a status quopreserving...

During the last few decades, the internet and digital technology have fundamentally changed the global music industry. As a consequence, new companies and novel business models have emerged. Spotify, one of the new players in the music industry, has expanded its business activities and grown to...

This paper examines several dimensions of the relationship between diversification and performance. Specifically, we investigate the link between related and unrelated diversification and performance. We also study the effect of the potential redeployment of ‘plastic' assets on unrelated...

In this paper we investigate the link between corporate diversification relatedness and economic performance, through the resource plasticity channel. To investigate this, we estimate a dynamic panel on a data set of 2,396 diversified firms from the euro area over the 2010-2017 period. Our...

Small and medium enterprises, or referred to herein as “SME,” may face possible extinction when falling behind the fierce competition in the marketplaces. Undoubtedly, SMEs business viability is the big question mark. Given the limited current capabilities, SMEs may face substantial hurdles...

We investigate the relationship between product diversification and performance in the Dutch property-liability (P&L) insurance industry for the period 2007-2018. We employ a two-step approach: we first investigate the drivers of diversification and, as a second step, we investigate the impact...

Product scope adjustment is a key mechanism through which multi-product firms achieve efficient resource allocations. In this paper, we take a novel perspective to study firms' product scope adjustment behavior through the lens of asset pricing. Using a unique panel scanner data set containing...