Abstract:
European Integration and International M&As: the Case of Poland.

This paper studies determinants of international mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Poland using the predictions of the knowledge capital model of multinational enterprise. The empirical implementation of the theory is based on the negative binomial model and the bilateral dataset covering 143 countries over the period 1995–2015. Our estimation results indicate that M&As in Poland are explained by both differences in relative factor endowments and in market size which confirms the importance of both market seeking and efficiency seeking motives. Moreover, the efficiency seeking motive is losing its importance over time while the market seeking motive becomes more important. 

Abstract:
Higher Education, Management Control and the Everyday Academic.

This contribution to the Festskrift for Hanne Norreklit examines how the use of management controls by senior management of universities impacts on the everyday academic. This examination is rooted in two interrelated issues, being, first, what should the purpose of a university be and second, what should they look to contribute to society. To keep the analysis that follows manageable, England provides a representative setting due to these issues having been heavily debated there within recent decades. While these debates continue, market-orientated understandings have come to dominate, influencing the focus of successive governments and, in turn, the situated practices of universities. Specifically, this has changed the focus of senior managers, at universities, away from their traditional remit towards revenue generating activities. Key to their efforts is the understanding that external impressions of their university, as provided by, for example, rankings, will affect financial performance. This results in senior management increasingly managing for the rankings and other such external signifiers. In so doing, they have progressively introduced management control regimes that focus the organisation’s activities onto the external signifiers. However, as senior managements’ performance, and thereby rewards, has become increasingly linked to the external signifiers, their focus has narrowed only to the output metrics of the management controls they have put into place. Hence, they become wilfully ignorant of the wider impact these management controls have, and the pressure cooker situation this creates for many everyday academics. While this outcome has been well documented in the extant literature, this article adds, through the analysis of exemplars, how this is resulting in the grimmest of situations, with dire consequences. As part of noting that this could, and should, be different, speculation is raised over whether other management controls may act as release valves to this pressure cooker situation. 

Abstract:
Imagining cooperative tax regulation: Common origins, divergent paths.

In many countries, relational field dynamics between tax administrators and corporate taxpayers have undergone significant changes in recent years. We conceive of cooperative compliance models implemented in the Netherlands and the UK between large corporate taxpayers and the respective tax administrations as dynamic strategic action fields, nested within the wider tax field and influenced by shifts in the external environment. Drawing on a series of interviews with skilled actors we identify similarities between the two countries in terms of the initial motivation for introducing cooperative compliance. We also identify differences in the subsequent trajectories. We find that within the respective strategic action fields, an imaginary of cooperation built around mutual trust contributes to the sustainability of the field. Vulnerability to developments in proximate fields on the other hand undermines field sustainability. Together these concepts help to explain the different trajectories and demonstrate the value in exploring shared understandings in strategic actions fields as imaginaries and paying more attention to the influence of proximate fields. The findings have implications for regulatory policy design in other settings. 

Abstract:
Transfer pricing: changing views in changing times.

Transfer pricing for tax purposes has long been contentious, but recent political and public concerns about tax avoidance have energised critiques of current rules and debates about proposals for change. Transfer pricing tax rules are underpinned by the arm’s length principle and we consider how the common understanding of this principle has developed and changed, as criticism of it has grown and there have been increasing calls for change. In this qualitative study we draw on Bourdieusian concepts: we focus on the views of senior transfer pricing professionals relating to the UK and the US and consider how their views and transfer pricing practices have changed over a period of field disruption. This is important because calls for transformation of the field need to be cognizant of the extent to which existing practices are firmly embedded and thereby resilient to change. We find that over the period of our longitudinal study the senior transfer pricing professionals show a degree of adaptability to the use of the arm’s length principle, which continues to dominate.