Public PhD defence Tristan De Blick

Abstract

Resources are the building blocks of firm behavior. Consequently, they are important determinants of firm performance, growth, and survival. It is, therefore, of vital importance to have a good understanding of how firm resources affect firm behavior. In order to study how a firm’s resource profile affects its behavior, this PhDdissertation focuses on financial resources on the one hand and strategic changes on the other. If resources are the building blocks of firm behavior, financial resources are the ingredients of those blocks. They can be freely allocated towards any purpose, and can also be used to acquire other resources. Strategic changes are actions that a firm has decided upon at the strategic level, such as exporting or acquisitions. They can be insightful to study firm behavior as they are a departure from the firm’s current behavior. Indeed, while a firm’s current behavior reflects the cumulation of all managerial decisions in the past, strategic changes only reflect the latest managerial decisions. As such, strategic changes allow us to study in a direct way how firms’ financial resources affect their behavior. The topic of this dissertation, therefore, is the study of the role of firms’ financial resources as antecedents for strategic changes.

• Supervisors Prof. Dr. Eddy Laveren & Prof. Dr. Ine Paeleman
• Date Tuesday 24 October 2023, at 5.00 p.m.
• Location Room R.112, Building R,University of Antwerp, City Campus,Rodestraat 14,  2000 Antwerp