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To examine Australian corporate acquisitions data in the context of contemporary acquisitions theory.

Empirical analysis using event study procedures.

The study of Australian acquisitions shows that domestic acquisitions are more likely to produce favourable market responses for acquirers than foreign direct investment actions. Companies with recent upwards price momentum are also more likely to engage in successful acquisitions. However, the relative “valuation” of acquirers appears to be unimportant in the Australian acquisitions process. The results are linked to the smaller, more isolated, nature of the Australian economy.

A long horizon event study methodology could be used. Alternative treatments could be used to assess relative value and competitive advantage. Other smaller isolated markets, similar to Australia, could be considered.

The use of international corporate acquisitions data, from Australia, supports both Competitive Advantage Theory and Market Driven Acquisitions Theory. There is little evidence to suggest that Cheap Capital motivates a large number of acquisition actions. The results are linked to the smaller, more isolated, nature of the Australian economy, and show that recent price momentum and the location of the investment are important. This latter finding suggests a form of market segmentation still prevails.

The purpose of this paper is to present the self-described “journey” of a person with dementia (Brian; author 3) in his re-learning of old technologies and learning of new ones and the impact this had on his life.

This is a single case study detailing the participant's experiences collaborating with a researcher to co-create methods of facilitating this learning process, which he documented in the form of an online blog and diary entries. These were analysed using NVivo to reveal the key themes.

Brian was able to relearn previously used technologies and learn two new ones. This lead to an overarching theme of positive outlook on life supported by person-centredness, identity and technology, which challenged negative perceptions about dementia.

The paper provides an example of how learning and technology improved the life of one person with dementia. By sharing the approach the authors hope to encourage others to embrace the challenge of designing and developing innovative solutions for people with a dementia diagnosis by leveraging both current mainstream technology and creating novel bespoke interventions for dementia.

The personal perspective of a person with dementia and his experiences of (re-) learning provide a unique insight into the impact of technology on his life.

The purpose of this paper is to use firm-level data to examine whether the political cycle differentially relates to small vs large firms in New Zealand; a country that operates a unicameral political system has a short three-year political term and a right-of-centre stock market premium exists.

Using firm-level data from 1972 to 2010, the authors examine monthly returns during right-of-centre National governments and left-of-centre Labour governments. The authors apply Santa Clara and Valkanov (2003) regression analysis approach to examine the political cycle impact on firm returns.

Like in the USA, New Zealand’s political cycle premium is driven by small firms; however, the results are opposite. In New Zealand, periods governed by the right of the political spectrum produce significantly higher stock returns than those from the left and this finding is primarily driven by small firms who perform particularly poorly under left-of-centre governments.

Small firms were relatively heavily affected by the move to an open, deregulated economy; they were also less able to cope with tight monetary conditions, and periods of sharply falling inflation. New Zealand’s three-year political term may encourage newly formed governments to implement relatively fast moving shifts in policy where a more reasoned and steady approach would be warranted.

This is the first paper to use firm-level data outside of the USA to examine the political cycle impact.

This paper aims to share the findings of a realist evaluation study that set out to identify how to strengthen nursing, midwifery and allied health professions (NMAHP) leadership across all health-care contexts in the UK conducted between 2018 and 2019. The collaborative research team were from the Universities of Bangor, Ulster, the University of the West of Scotland and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Realist evaluation and appreciative inquiry were used across three phases of the study. Phase 1 analysed the literature to generate tentative programme theories about what works, tested out in Phase 2 through a national social media Twitter chat and sense-making workshops to help refine the theories in Phase 3. Cross-cutting themes were synthesised into a leadership framework identifying the strategies that work for practitioners in a range of settings and professions based on the context, mechanism and output configuration of realist evaluation. Stakeholders contributed to the ongoing interrogation, analysis and synthesis of project outcomes.

Five guiding lights of leadership, a metaphor for principles, were generated that enable and strengthen leadership across a range of contexts. – “The Light Between Us as interactions in our relationships”, “Seeing People’s Inner Light”, “Kindling the Spark of light and keeping it glowing”, “Lighting up the known and the yet to be known” and “Constellations of connected stars”.

This study has illuminated the a-theoretical nature of the relationships between contexts, mechanisms and outcomes in the existing leadership literature. There is more scope to develop the tentative programme theories developed in this study with NMAHP leaders in a variety of different contexts. The outcomes of leadership research mostly focussed on staff outcomes and intermediate outcomes that are then linked to ultimate outcomes in both staff and patients (supplemental). More consideration needs to be given to the impact of leadership on patients, carers and their families.

The study has developed additional important resources to enable NMAHP leaders to demonstrate their leadership impact in a range of contexts through the leadership impact self-assessment framework which can be used for 360 feedback in the workplace using the appreciative assessment and reflection tool.

Whilst policymakers note the increasing importance of leadership in facilitating the culture change needed to support health and care systems to adopt sustainable change at pace, there is still a prevailing focus on traditional approaches to individual leadership development as opposed to collective leadership across teams, services and systems. If this paper fails to understand how to transform leadership policy and education, then it will be impossible to support the workforce to adapt and flex to the increasingly complex contexts they are working in. This will serve to undermine system integration for health and social care if the capacity and capability for transformation are not attended to. Whilst there are ambitious global plans (WHO, 2015) to enable integrated services to be driven by citizen needs, there is still a considerable void in understanding how to authentically engage with people to ensure the transformation is driven by their needs as opposed to what the authors think they need. There is, therefore, a need for systems leaders with the full skillset required to enable integrated services across place-based systems, particularly clinicians who are able to break down barriers and silo working across boundaries through the credibility, leadership and facilitation expertise they provide.

The realist evaluation with additional synthesis from key stakeholders has provided new knowledge about the principles of effective NMAHP leadership in health and social care, presented in such a way that facilitates the use of the five guiding lights to inform further practice, education, research and policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of China's health biotech clusters from an interregional perspective. By treating clustering as the result of firms' localization choices, the paper examines whether and why different types of firms agglomerate in the various locations.

The paper employs a demographic approach that is inspired by the 2006 work of Romanelli and Feldman on cluster development in the USA. It categorizes China's clusters based on differences in the degree of policy support and the nature of the science base. Then, it draws a sample of 75 of China's most visible firms and analyses them in terms of entrepreneurial origin, their location and, if applicable, the location of their subsidiaries. By matching types of firms with types of clusters, the paper highlights some characteristics of China's regional development.

Studies on China's high‐tech agglomerations unanimously complain about a lack of “creative buzz” compared to the vibrant clusters of for example, the Bay Area in the USA. The analysis indicates that the lack of a creative culture is associated with the anatomy of cluster development. China's clusters grow to a significant extent by attracting enterprise subsidiaries to their sites. The authors argue that these particular cluster anatomies are founded on China's capital market. As the capital market is not prepared to provide pre‐revenue firms with sufficient funds, firms have to earn revenue quickly in order to ensure their viability. Therefore, they concentrate on building up manufacturing capacity and exploiting given technologies. The main point is that local governments as major providers of financial support are instrumental in this process. The establishment of manufacturing subsidiaries in various locations rests on the rationale of collecting funds. This leads to the conclusion that national capital markets either reinforce or inhibit clustering depending on how much it allows the mobility of financial capital. Local government funds do not travel far. This has an impact on the firms' localization decisions and their business strategies, which, in turn, affects the “culture” inside the clusters.

This argument is based on a limited number of interviews conducted by the authors or other researchers. In order to corroborate the link between the capital market and local development trajectories, more evidence needs to be collected via interview surveys and other means to extract financial information.

Unlike other research on Chinese clusters, this paper offers an interregional perspective based on a demographic approach. The argument is original in linking regional cluster dynamics with the national institutional set‐up.

The study of markets encompasses a number of disciplines – including anthropology, economics, history, and sociology – and a larger number of theoretical frameworks (see Plattner, 1989; Reddy, 1984; Smelser & Swedberg, 1994). Despite this disciplinary and theoretical diversity, scholarship on markets tends toward either realist or constructionist accounts (Dobbin, 1994; Dowd & Dobbin, forthcoming).¹ Realist accounts treat markets as extant arenas that mostly (or should) conform to a singular ideal-type. Realists thus take the existence of markets as given and examine factors that supposedly shape all markets in a similar fashion. When explaining market outcomes, they tout such factors as competition, demand, and technology; moreover, they can treat the impact of these factors as little influenced by context. Constructionist accounts treat markets as emergent arenas that result in a remarkable variety of types. They problematize the existence of markets and examine how contextual factors contribute to this variety. When explaining market outcomes, some show that social relations and/or cultural assumptions found in a particular setting can qualify the impact of competition (Uzzi, 1997), demand (Peiss, 1998), and technology (Fischer, 1992). Constructionists thus stress the contingent, rather than universal, processes that shape markets.

Highlights the importance of music in ritual and culture generally, extending the focus to collective action. Argues that music and its emotional and cognitive impacts can be fundamental to the construction of social movement culture. Analyses song lyrics from the southern textile strikes of 1929‐1934 in an attempt to show how music and song helped construct a collective identity across relatively dispersed mill villages, shifted accountability for mill workers problems towards the labour process and its beneficiaries and suggested to the listener a collective solution. Discusses the implications of the findings for understanding music, culture and their relation to subordinate group challenge.

This chapter analyses the character of Mrs Coulter in BBC/HBO TV show His Dark Materials (2019–ongoing). Mrs Coulter shows clear links with traditional fairy tale figures; in the words of actor Ruth Wilson, ‘She's fairy godmother and she's the nasty queen. She's like Snow White, and she's the Wicked Witch’ (HBO, 2019). Keeping in mind these intertextual references, but focusing on the text, I am going to study the ways in which Mrs Coulter's ‘being evil’ is constructed: are any motivations provided to account for her becoming evil?

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for her – a woman struggling for power in a patriarchal society? How do her interactions with other characters modify the ‘traditional’ roles she evokes and her perceived evilness? To answer these questions, I will employ theoretical tools stemming from queer theory and positioning theory. While arguing for the usefulness of such theoretical outlook for the study of villains, I aim to prove that Mrs Coulter is depicted as a thwarted good character, ruined not only by societal sexist norms, but also by the internalization of ideals typical of toxic masculinity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the accuracy of expert judgment, drawing on empirical evidence and theory from multiple disciplines. It suggests that counsel offered with confidence by experts might, under certain circumstances, be without merit, and presents approaches to assessing the accuracy of such counsel.

The paper synthesizes research findings on expert judgment drawn from multiple fields, including psychology, criminal justice, political science, and decision analysis. It examines internal and external factors affecting the veracity of what experts may judge to be matters of common sense, using a semiotic structure.

In multiple domains, including management, expert accuracy is, in general, no better than chance. Increased experience, however, is often accompanied by an unjustified increase in self‐confidence.

While the dynamic nature of decision making in organizations renders the development of a codified, reliable knowledge base potentially unachievable, there is value in recognizing these limitations, and employing tactics to explore more thoroughly both problem and solutions spaces

The paper's originality lies in its integration of recent, multiple‐disciplinary research as a basis for persuading decision makers of the perils of accepting expert advice without skepticism.