Just a few days ago, my second Academy of Management conference ended. The timing couldn’t be more fitting, as I’m gradually wrapping up my industrial PhD trajectory within the FINDER project. As my contract officially concludes at the end of this month, this conference served as a reflective milestone, tying together much of the work and learning from the past years.
This time, I had the opportunity to present the paper we are developing on sequential strategies to conduct acquisitions and divestitures. The project has been quite exploratory due to two key novelties for me. First, while the sequence analysis approach has already been established by prior work, we advanced it by shifting to an evolving rather than static perspective. Second, the large volume of data required to model and assess these strategies presented a rewarding coding and computational challenge.
I was happy to see that the paper was received favorably by both the initial reviewers and the AoM session (my thanks to Jan-Michael Ross, Dmitry Sharapov, and Manish Popli for their insights). In a field where a considerable amount of time passes between the first creation of an idea and its external feedback, this response was both validating and energizing. It offers a clear direction on how to further refine the paper which I will implement jointly with the much appreciated support of my supervisors Rick Aalbers and Killian McCarthy.
Want to read more? Please reach out to receive this FINDER enabled working paper: With or Without You: Long-Term Frequency and Sequences of Acquisitions and Divestitures. Geisen, J., Aalbers, R., KJ McCarthy (2025). Academy of Management Proceedings 2025 (1), 15338
Onward and upward 🚀
Jonas Geisen
FINDER 