Why Multibusiness Corporations Split: CEO Strategizing as the Ecosystem Evolves
研究了多业务公司CEO为何决定分拆公司，以惠普CEO梅格·惠特曼的分拆决策为例，揭示了生态系统演化导致业务模式分化、互补性与复杂性恶性循环及资本市场压力如何促使分拆。
We investigate why CEOs of multibusiness corporations decide to engage in a corporate split that spawns multiple independent, smaller, but more adaptive, entities. Through an in-depth examination of the dynamic forces that led CEO Meg Whitman to split HP, we propose that the company’s evolving business ecosystem led to the divergence of the consumer-oriented and enterprise-oriented business models in the corporate portfolio. We document the interplay between inter–business model complementarity and intra–business model complexity and how this vicious cycle, in combination with increasing capital market pressure, led to the CEO decision to split and her public justification for this momentous move. Our combined longitudinal interpretative and realist process-tracing approach generates one of the first conceptual frameworks to integrate insights from the ecosystem and corporate divestiture literatures.