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This paper investigates how a firm's human resource capability can affect the deployment and effectiveness of corporate mergers and acquisitions strategy.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is treated as a long‐term strategic orientation based on human resource advantage rather than a tactic to pursue short‐term goals. Using a sample of 267 US banking firms, the main and interaction effects of M&A intensity, HR capability, and in‐state propensity on four firm performance measures were examined.

The findings confirm that banking M&A could be very effective when the firm had high HR capability. Evidence was also found that HR capability had a direct impact on firm performance. Although in‐state M&A strategy was in general superior to out‐of‐state M&A strategy, a firm with excellent HR capability might narrow the performance difference between in‐state and out‐of‐state M&A.

An obvious drawback of using this sample of banking firms is that it raises questions about the generalizability of these findings to smaller financial firms and firms in other industries. This study considers firms having at least one M&A over a three‐year period, so we should not generalize our findings to those firms preferring to use internal growth strategies or greenfield start‐ups.

The main message of this paper is that human resource capability is critical for M&A strategy to be effective.

By extending previous investigations which showed that M&A strategy and HR capacity should be independently treated, this study highlights the critical role of internal HR capability in performance implications of M&A strategy.

This work aims to address source and dynamics of institutional change. It seeks to develop analytic tools by adaptation of Schumpeterian notion on entrepreneurship, Nelson's work on basic institutions and specific institutions, and Nonaka's middle‐up‐down framework of knowledge management in contrast to top‐down process. Pragmatically it attempts to understand how to improve policy capacity that challenges China seriously.

The work adopts a detailed case study method. A paired case is chosen with the criteria that they have widespread impact in China, and are representative of general and specific institutional change, respectively. Data came from mixed sources: field work and publications. Comparison of the paired cases identifies similarities and differences of different institutional change.

Similarities in the cases are in the important role of institutional entrepreneurs, crucial necessity of field experimentation, and regulatory and legislative means of knowledge processing. Differences are that centralized “top‐down” process of knowledge development, together with committed and centrally guided field experimentation, characterizes general institutional change. In contrast, coordinated and distributed “middle‐up‐down” process, together with autonomously emerged creation at the grassroots, characterizes specific institutional change.

This is a new research area. Many more empirical and theoretical works are needed.

As to how China should improve policy capacity, the study indicates: to focus policy learning on specific parts and facets of institutional settings; to change policy‐makers' role from omni‐competent controller to catalyst/promoter of institutional change; to assign an active role to middle levels and allow broader participation and diverse experimentations.

The author explores interesting details of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional changes based on the two case studies. This work fills the gap of how to analyze institutional change from the innovation/innovation systems perspective.

This study aims to present a novel technique to localize the human position in a room, to manage people in a specified space.

In this study, a real-time human sensing detection and smart lighting control was designed within a single silicon core. The chip has been successfully realized within 1.5 mm² silicon area using TSMC 0.25 um process.

This chip can read the weak signal of pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor to find the position of human body in a dark room and then help control the smart lighting system for an intelligent surveillance system.

This chip presented the retriggering delay control to expand the LED lighting time infinitely to avoid lighting-off suddenly while users stay on a space. This function is very useful in a practical intelligent surveillance system that is mainly based on human detection to better reduce power dissipation and memory space.