De‐commitment to losing strategic action: evidence from the divestiture of poorly performing acquisitions
研究CEO在何种条件下会放弃表现不佳的收购，发现当业绩可归因于外部因素或置于公司整体业绩背景中时，更可能剥离。
Abstract We use a mental accounting framework to study the conditions in which CEOs de‐commit to poorly performing acquisitions and so become more likely to divest them. We test this framework by contrasting the experiences of 68 firms that divested acquisitions with a control sample of 68 firms that did not divest their acquisitions. Consistent with the theory that we use to explain and predict de‐commitment, our results suggest that poorly performing acquired units tend to be divested when executives can place them within ‘attributional accounts’ (i.e., accounts for the cause of the performance that do not incriminate them) and ‘comprehensive accounts’ (i.e., within the context of overall firm performance). Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.