Tübke, A.: "Success Factors of Corporate Spin-Offs", Kluwer, 2003 (forthcoming)
Corporate Spin-Offs are highly successful
phenomena that produce important impacts on their economic environment. However,
existing investigation can only deliver partial explanations for this success,
as it takes into account a too small number of single factors and uses research
approaches focused on narrow aspects. The present
work has been established in order to investigate the individual contributions
of a wide range of factors on the Corporate Spin-Off decision and its success,
the influence of the interrelation of the factors and the existence of typologies.
The first chapter presents a revision of existing definitions and establishes
a general typology. It highlights five main topics: value creation, Corporate
Spin-Off policy, framework conditions, relationship between parent and Spin-Off,
and characteristics and effects of Corporate Spin-Offs. The characteristics
of Spin-Offs reveal that Spin-Offs play an important role in new firm creation
and combine the high growth of new companies with considerably lower failure
rates. The positive impacts of Corporate Spin-Offs on their economic environment,
competitiveness and employment stand out. The first chapter finishes with the
development of a definition as a basis for this investigation. Chapter number
two presents the factors that affect Corporate Spin-Off processes, distinguishing
between seventeen factors from previous literature and four new factors. Relations
with the Spin-Off decision and the success of the process are established using
these factors. Chapter three shows the models applied in previous research in
order to analyse Corporate Spin-Off processes. Using univariate models, the
first Spin-Off studies tried to explain excess returns in stock prices as a
consequence of the Spin-Off announcement (event date analysis). Multivariate
models appeared more recently either as independent models or in combination
with event date analysis or other multivariate statistics. The nine steps of
analysis proposed for this investigation comprise a range of statistical models,
namely cluster analysis, principal component analysis, linear and logit regression,
and discriminant analysis. The construction of these models and the variables
included are also presented. This chapter finishes with a description of the
degree of novelty of the approach chosen here and the expected contribution
to science. The fourth chapter shows the development of the questionnaire, revealing
how the factors were formulated in the questionnaire and describing the development
and operationalisation of the success dimensions. The sampling population consisted
of 4.158 companies in high-technology sectors and in cost-cutting sectors in
twelve European countries. 211 companies responded to the questionnaire. In
the fifth chapter, the analysis of the results is presented. First, the descriptive
statistics of the responses to the questionnaire are shown. Then, "bottom-up
typologies" are established and the motives for the Spin-Off decision analysed.
After this, the success dimensions are reduced through principal component analysis
and the importance of the single Spin-Off factors is analysed. "Top-down typologies"
are established at the end. Chapter number six presents a synthesis and the
conclusions of this work. It details the contributions to the research questions.
In addition, future research needs are identified.
©
2003 by Alexander Tübke.
All rights reserved.
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