Target company cross-border effects in acquisitions into the UK

We analyse the abnormal returns to target shareholders in crossborder and domestic acquisitions of UK companies. The crossborder effect during the bid month is small (0.84%), although crossborder targets gain significantly more than domestic targets during the months surrounding the bid. We find no evidence for the level of abnormal returns in crossborder acquisitions to be associated with market access or exchange rate effects, and only limited support for an international diversification effect. However, the crossborder effect appears to be associated with significant payment effects, and there is no significant residual crossborder effect once various bid characteristics are controlled for

Strategic positioning:an integrated decision process for manufacturers

Purpose – This paper describes research that has sought to create a formal and rational process that guides manufacturers through the strategic positioning decision. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on a series of case studies to develop and test the decision process. Findings – A decision process that leads the practitioner through an analytical process to decide which manufacturing activities they should carryout themselves. Practical implications – Strategic positioning is concerned with choosing those production related activities that an organisations should carry out internally, and those that should be external and under the ownership and control of suppliers, partners, distributors and customers. Originality/value – This concept extends traditional decision paradigms, such as those associated with “make versus buy” and “outsourcing”, by looking at the interactions between manufacturing operations and the wider supply chain networks associated with the organisation

The business cycle, macroeconomic shocks and the cross section The growth of UK quoted companies

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:3509.880(0114) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Market metrics What should we tell the shareholders?

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m01/35854 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

British flanders: Co-produced television drama and the limits of a European heritage

If the origins of the heritage discourse are national and political, this is most obviously the case in the United Kingdom. Stuart Hall (2005) has argued that this discourse met a British desire to preserve those sites and objects that would acquire value and meaning only in relation to a specifically English (rather than British) aristocratic and imperial past. The Conservative National Heritage Acts of the 1980's accordingly supported a heritage industry that, centred on the commercial exploitation of noble estates and the natural environment, served the economic interest and bourgeois values of the English upper class (Wright 1985; Hewison 1987). It is in this historical context of Thatcherite Conservatism, Claire Monk reminds us, that the critical debate on the British heritage film emerged in the late 1980's (2011: 14–18). The discussion addressed a collection of historical melodramas that were said to construct a heritage of Britishness that positioned itself at the height of Britain’s imperial power while refashioning its national past into romanticised representations of England’s southern districts and their pastoral sceneries and aristocratic social milieus. In his 1993 essay entitled ‘Representing the National Past’, Andrew Higson posited that films such as Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson 1981) belonged to a cycle of heritage productions whose ‘aesthetic of display’ fetishized the private possessions of the English elites. In the process, these nostalgic visualisations established a ‘heritage space’ for ‘the display of heritage properties’ that, commodified into a national brand, served Thatcherism’s support for England’s social elite (Higson 1993: 117, 2003: 9–45). Since the publication of Higson’s polemic, scholars have increasingly questioned the discursive dichotomy between those melodramas that romanticised an elitist English past and those more socially engaged ‘anti-heritage films’ or ‘post-heritage films’ that were either set in a post-imperialist, working-class Britain or advanced alternative representations of gender and sexuality (Church Gibson 2002; Monk 1995). What united these different responses, however, was their association of the heritage drama with a British national cinema

Determinants of university students’ attendance

Background: Attendance of university students at their timetabled teaching sessions is usually associated with higher levels of educational attainment. Attendance is usually considered to reflect students’ level of engagement with their course and to be critical to student success; despite the potential for technological alternatives, lectures and other face-to-face sessions still tend to be the primary method of teaching at university. Purpose: Here we review studies which have investigated these determinants of attendance in order to gain a better understanding of whether–and how–Higher Education Institutions are able to improve attendance rates. Sources of evidence: Electronic databases (e.g. ERIC, Web of Science) were used to identify articles exploring attendance in Higher Education settings. Main argument: Some of the most debated determinants of attendance are reviewed: teaching issues (e.g. quality, style and format); effects of university expectations and policy (e.g. mandating attendance, awarding grades for attendance); scheduling issues; provision of materials online; and the effects of individual factors arguably outside of the Higher Education Institution’s control (e.g. finance, student employment, student demographics and psychological factors). Conclusions: It is suggested that, although some individual factors influence student attendance and are arguably out of the control of HEIs, it is possible for them to facilitate attendance through adjustments to aspects of degree delivery such as attendance policies and monitoring, timetabling and style of teaching. Implications for policies on the recording of lectures, curriculum design and student term-time working are also discussed. Future research on student attendance should include longer and larger studies which simultaneously consider a range of influences; examining both inter- and intra-individual variability and different types of teaching sessions