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This paper aims to look at the three areas of corporate governance, intellectual capital and strategic business valuation from the perspective of a long‐term value investor.

The paper begins by briefly laying out the investment tenets of a long‐term value investor and then proceeds to align long‐term value investing with long‐term stewardship of economic resources. The paper is a transcript of a keynote presentation delivered at the 1st McMaster World Congress on Strategic Business Valuation.

In the area of intellectual capital the paper points out that the concept of intellectual capital falls far short of the fuller and more necessary view on intellectual knowledge which should be replaced or at least augmented with the notion of wisdom.

Any notion of strategic valuation or pricing of assets based on their economic value will be significantly impacted by one's investment principles and time horizon. The paper mentions two examples of inefficiencies in the market due to divergent time horizons. The two examples discussed are income trusts and principal protected notes.

One's investment philosophy or principles which largely determine time horizon will have a significant impact on how one approaches the important areas of corporate governance, intellectual capital and strategic business valuation. The concern of the paper is to the extent that we have become more short‐term in our investment principles; this will have serious long‐term negative impacts on the capital markets.

This paper aims to highlight the reasons for the establishment of savings banks in New Zealand, with a primary thesis being that savings banks in New Zealand were intended to operate in a similar way to those in the UK. That is, to provide banking services to the working classes and supply revenue to a cash-strapped government. Savings banks were reasonably successful in meeting the needs of their depositors but provided little revenue to the government. This gives rise to a secondary thesis that, when the Government was presented with the opportunity to establish the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), they did so with revenue in mind.

Contemporaneous scholarly discussion along with newspaper, primary sourced bank and government archives builds an interpretation of why savings banks were established in New Zealand. This interpretation is presented in the form of a narrative, which tells the story of the rise of private savings banks in New Zealand and their eventual stagnation when the POSB was introduced.

Savings banks in New Zealand were initiated by Governor Grey primarily to provide an alternative source of development funding. New Zealand savings banks, initially modelled on UK and New South Wales variants, also appear to have been designed to meet the needs of the working classes, with deposits limited to £50 a year and a maximum balance set of £100 in total. However, as the requirement to invest in Government debt was removed from their founding legislation, they mainly provided mortgages to their local communities. To some extent, this situation was remedied in 1867 when the POSB was established, as it was required to invest as directed by the Government.

The narrative highlights the importance of savings banks and the POSB to both the people and government of New Zealand. This research adds to the discussion surrounding the purpose of savings banks and details the contributions made by both savings banks and the POSB in colonial New Zealand. As previous publications were in the main commissioned by various savings banks, this work provides an independent academic analysis of the first savings banks in colonial New Zealand in the period from the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 until New Zealand became a dominion in 1907.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment framework for evaluating the success of knowledge management (KM) initiatives in a government setting.

The approach used was to first conduct a brief review of the leading thinking on KM and intellectual capital (IC) measurement approaches. The selection process used to recommend the results‐based management assessment framework (RMAF) as the most appropriate measurement framework is then discussed together with the development of logic models for all KM objectives. Finally, the validation methodology used, a survey design and data collection methodology, is described.

The study finds that the RMAF framework proved to be a good fit for KM assessment in a government setting.

The evaluation of KM and IC are necessarily organization‐specific. Further research is needed to report on the generalizability of this evaluation approach.

The KM evaluation approach proposed here helped the government organization translate its KM strategy into action and enhanced management of the KM program. The proposed evaluation approach will help ensure that each type of stakeholder receives assessment results in a form that is of greatest use to them.

While there are many KM and IC metrics described in the literature, there have been limited attempts to address the evaluation question from a more holistic perspective. This paper shows how quantitative and qualitative measures can be combined to better assess the success of KM initiatives in a systematic and concrete manner.

The purpose of this paper is to show how Sarbanes‐Oxley is motivating corporate boards to bring heightened scrutiny for all aspects of the acquisition process, including valuation. This paper examines how in addition to the high‐tech M&A strategic objective, the decision on the post closing integration strategy should be considered as part of a target's firm valuation.

The paper argues that, within the high‐tech sector, the target firm characteristics in relation to the market are not sufficient for the basis of valuation. Planned management interventions, including the acquirer's management integration strategy decision, should also be considered. It further argues that intellectual capital retention, an important element of the target firm's valuation, is directly related to how closely the pace and degree of integration matches the acquirer's strategic objectives and the outcome of the due diligence.

Based on the findings from a set of interviews with M&A practitioners in the high‐tech field, due diligence, post closing integration planning and identity are viewed as important factors to the acquisition outcome. They appear not to be considered for the target firm valuation, which may result in an acquirer paying an excessive premium.

Finally the paper proposes a framework to guide high‐tech firms to select an integration strategy and its valuation impact in relation to the acquisition strategic objective, the due diligence outcome and the integration strategy.

The outcome of this project is raising the importance of due diligence and post integration strategy in relation to other factors that impact transaction outcome such as intellectual capital retention and valuation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the goal of quantum leap breakthrough performance in acquisitions is to enable readers to achieve an unprecedented leap in performance as a result of major acquisitions.

This requires first, establishing acquisition readiness by developing a core set of capabilities and second, using a breakthrough approach that fuses both growth and expense cutting synergies to accomplish the quantum leap performance gains, especially during the integration stages. These capabilities enable the successful integration of the acquired organization and the emergence of the new entity.

The paper finds that those organizations that are going to win at this game are the ones that have the best capabilities for effecting the right acquisition and who can implement the best integration. Those capabilities are the name of the game.

The focus on capabilities is the prime distinguishing feature of quantum leap breakthrough performance in acquisitions. This is based on an organization developing the capabilities for core integration. Whether you are an integrator or a target, it is essential to have these capabilities.

If an organization wants to excel at developing, acquiring and integration, it needs have the following core set of capabilities: strategic agility, market agility, organization building, people management, project and process management and knowledge management, learning and innovation. When these capabilities interact with a set of six catalyzing springboards (i.e. customer strategy, organization strategy, integrating culture and leadership principles, a people strategy, integrating knowledge systems, and information technology architecture) the organization can achieve an extraordinary quantum leap in value.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new measure for organization health. It is proposed that the Donohue tripartite paradigm model can be used to pierce the veneer of the satisficing account to identify the moral appraisal stakeholders have made of corporate strategies based on external (i.e. economic, etc.) standards.

A cognitive mapping process through narratives is used to operationalize a tripartite paradigm framework to measure human capital. An existential‐phenomenological approach is adopted to ensure the figural integrity of data.

This paper can be viewed as the prototypical development phase for a methodology to support future real‐time ethical inquiry concerning social responsibility within the corporate world.

The tripartite paradigm model expressed by Donohue was intended for “real‐time” application. This study, however, proposed a retrospective analysis of stakeholder decision‐making within a firm as a means of unearthing any deficiencies that might block the operationalization of Donohue's generalist theory.

This appraisal can identify the conflict of conscience that characterizes a stakeholder's “lived‐worlds” based on their participation and exposure to company decision making. This diagnostic tool can assist stakeholders in identifying evidence of decline early enough in the history of an organization for proactive remedial action to be taken.

It is the hope of this study that the proposed cognitive mapping process can derive a measure of organizational health through an existential‐phenomenological approach to ensure the integrity of the data. Ultimately, the aim is that this will be a tool that can explore the phenomenon of misrepresentation and its effect on social cooperation within a market culture.

The purpose of this paper is to link two key disciplines in finance and science in a way which is representative of the many challenges in the development of the knowledge economy. However, the valuation of intangibles remains a contentious issue in finance.

In this paper, the financial and economic issues pertaining to the valuation of intellectual capital are evaluated and addressed.

An important aspect of raising capital is the ability to impute a fair value on the asset.

The investigative process involves evaluating and assessing the appropriateness and efficiency of current models and finds them to be inadequate in yielding the true value of intellectual capital employed in knowledge‐intensive firms.

A new methodology for valuation is indeed required, and this value driver valuation processes may produce significantly better understandings of the worth of intellectual capital in the knowledge economy.

This paper evaluates various methods that are currently used and recommends the development of a valuation process for new and evolving technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which Canadian companies have embraced value‐based management (VBM) methods, identify the characteristics of these companies and of the executives responsible for the introduction of VBM in their organisations and assess the stock price performance of the companies that use VMB vs. those that do not.

The study is based on a survey of CEOs of a large sample of Canadian companies and examines the relation of a number of explanatory variables, including stock price performance, to the probability of using VBM versus not using VBM via a regression analysis of qualitative choice, namely logit analysis.

The study finds that value‐based management methods are widely used in Canada, with the likelihood of usage being higher for larger companies with younger and more educated executives with an accounting/finance background. The statistical analysis that follows the tabulation of survey results indicates companies that used EVA had a better stock price performance than those not using EVA. Moreover, our logit regression analysis shows that companies with better stock market performance exhibited higher likelihood of using EVA.

The study implies that the lower usage of EVA in Canada, especially at the corporate level, provides some explanation for the stock market under‐ performance of the Canada market vis‐à‐vis the USA in the 1990s.

To our knowledge, this study serves as the first widespread evaluation of VBM methods in Canada and their effect on company and stock price performance.

The purpose of this paper is to construct and propose a definition for intangibles derived from the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm for use in academic research and practical applications.

Intangibles are defined as a subset of corporate resources. In this paper, various definitions for intangibles are tested against the RBV framework.

The majority of definitions in the extant literature are (implicitly or explicitly) in synchronization with the RBV. Thus, it is possible to find and propose a common definition for intangibles.

Some researchers argue that the field is still in its embryonic stages and thus the concepts might still be too fresh in order to find a stable common definition.

The paper offers a conceptual lens through which one can clearly link intangibles to strategy and offers a proposed definition of intangibles that incorporates a meta‐review of the literature.

The paper shows that it is in fact possible to accommodate various definitions of intangibles under one common framework and propose a unified characterization.