IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/agribz/v11y1995i6p553-563.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Changes in diversification among very large food manufacturing firms in the 1980s

Author

Listed:
  • John Y. Ding

    (Department of Economics and Business Administration, Framingham State College)

  • Julie A. Caswell

    (Department of Resource Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst)

Abstract

In the 1980s, corporate strategists advised companies to focus on increasing related and decreasing unrelated diversification. We use industry participation counts and entropy diversification indexes based on Trinet data to examine whether restructuring by 10 of the largest food and tobacco manufacturing firms fits this scenario. Indexes measuring related diversification within and outside food and tobacco manufacturing, unrelated diversification, and total diversification lend mixed support to the scenario. While about half of the firms followed the suggested pattern, half did not. These results suggest the importance of focusing on the cumulative impact of changes in a firm's activities on its level of diversification. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Suggested Citation

  • John Y. Ding & Julie A. Caswell, 1995. "Changes in diversification among very large food manufacturing firms in the 1980s," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 553-563.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:11:y:1995:i:6:p:553-563
    DOI: 10.1002/1520-6297(199511/12)11:6<553::AID-AGR2720110607>3.0.CO;2-C
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 1991. "Takeovers in the '60s and the '80s: Evidence and implications," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(S2), pages 51-59, December.
    2. Vasudevan Ramanujam & P. Varadarajan, 1989. "Research on corporate diversification: A synthesis," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(6), pages 523-551, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ron Adner & Peter Zemsky, 2016. "Diversification and Performance: Linking Relatedness, Market Structure, and the Decision to Diversify," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(1), pages 32-55, March.
    2. Lasse B. Lien & Peter G. Klein, 2013. "Can the Survivor Principle Survive Diversification?," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1478-1494, October.
    3. Nippa, Michael, 2011. "Zur Notwendigkeit des Corporate Portfolio Management: Eine Würdigung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung der letzten vier Jahrzehnte," Freiberg Working Papers 2011/02, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    4. Lorenz, Steffi, 2015. "Diversität und Verbundenheit der unternehmerischen Wissensbasis: Ein neuartiger Messansatz mit Indikatoren aus Innovationsprojekten," Discussion Papers on Strategy and Innovation 15-01, Philipps-University Marburg, Department of Technology and Innovation Management (TIM).
    5. Xi He, 2012. "Two Sides of a Coin: Endogenous and Exogenous Effects of Corporate Diversification on Firm Value," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 12(4), pages 375-397, December.
    6. Belmartino, Andrea & Calá, Carla Daniela, 2020. "A regional approach to the study of industrial diversity in Argentina (1996–2012)," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    7. Lim, Chulmin & Rowsell, Joe & Kim, Seongcheol, 2023. "Exploring the killer domains to create new value: A Comparative case study of Canadian and Korean telcos," 32nd European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2023: Realising the digital decade in the European Union – Easier said than done? 277998, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    8. Florence André-Le Pogamp & Frédéric Perdreau, 2009. "Stratégies de diversification et structure du capital," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 12(4), pages 5-38, December.
    9. Ocaña Pérez de Tudela, Carlos, 1994. "Why are there merger waves?," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB 7073, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    10. Markovitch, Dmitri G. & Huang, Dongling & Ye, Pengfei, 2020. "Marketing intensity and firm performance: Contrasting the insights based on actual marketing expenditure and its SG&A proxy," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 223-239.
    11. Nesta, Lionel, 2008. "Knowledge and productivity in the world's largest manufacturing corporations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(3-4), pages 886-902, September.
    12. Villalonga, Belen, 2000. "Does Diversification Cause the “Diversification Discount”?," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt40v212gm, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    13. Imbierowicz, Björn & Wahrenburg, Mark, 2013. "Wealth transfer effects between stockholders and bondholders," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 23-43.
    14. Jizhong Wu & Sergio Cesaretti, 2019. "Characteristics of Business Models, Business Diversification and Price Segmentation Strategies of Wineries in the Wine Route of Baja California, Mexico," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 10(2), pages 147-157, March.
    15. Thomas Hutzschenreuter & Fabian Guenther, 2009. "Complexity as a constraint on firm expansion within and across industries," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 373-392.
    16. Lin, Hsing-Er & Hsu, I-Chieh & Hsu, Audrey Wenhsin & Chung, Hsi-Mei, 2020. "Creating competitive advantages: Interactions between ambidextrous diversification strategy and contextual factors from a dynamic capability perspective," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    17. Armel Jacques, 2024. "Increased fines for repeat offenders and conglomerate dynamics," TEPP Working Paper 2024-06, TEPP.
    18. Shelton, Lois M., 2000. "Merger market dynamics: insights into the behavior of target and bidder firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 363-383, April.
    19. Catherine Matraves & Peter Rodriguez, 2005. "Profitability, Diversification, and Multinationality in Leading German and UK Firms," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 4(2), pages 87-105, August.
    20. Martynova, M. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2005. "Takeover Waves : Triggers, Performance and Motives," Discussion Paper 2005-029, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:11:y:1995:i:6:p:553-563. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6297 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.