Book chapter
Do CEO Cognitive Biases Affect M&A Performance? Evidence from Russian Firms
In book
Confidence and overconfidence are essential aspects of human nature, but measuring (over)confidence is not easy. Our approach is to consider students' forecasts of their exam grades. Part of a student's grade expectation is based on the student's previous academic achievements; what remains can be interpreted as (over)confidence. Our results are based on a sample of about five hundred second-year undergraduate students enrolled in a statistics course in Moscow. The course contains three exams and each student produces a forecast for each of the three exams. Our models allow us to estimate overconfidence quantitatively. Using these models we find that students' expectations are not rational and that most students are overconfident, in agreement with the general literature. Less obvious is that overconfidence helps: given the same academic achievement students with larger confidence obtain higher exam grades. Female students are less overconfident than male students, their forecasts are more rational, and they are also faster learners in the sense that they adjust their expectations more rapidly.
Management practices of Russian and global companies, operating in Russia, have undergone a series of changes in 2016-2017 as a consequence of the 2014 – 2015 crises. These crises can be presented as a combination of tree different types of crises: cyclical crisis (oil prices), structural crisis (institutions, productivity) and managerial crisis. In light of a turbulent external environment, as well as hardening competition caused by the times of crisis, Russian and global companies were forced to adapt and change their management practices quickly, to maintain strategic competitive advantages on their market segments and retain qualified employees. To study the dynamics of ongoing processes and diagnose operational changes occurring in Russian and global companies in the post-crisis period of 2016 - 2017, we conducted a large-scale empirical study, which involved 1530 (2016) and 1245 (2017) companies. The sample was composed of Russian (73% - 80%) and global companies (20% - 27%), representing 10 main sectors of economic activity (according to the OKVED universal classification). The companies are operating in Moscow and the Moscow region. The use of statistical methods and SPSS Statistics software to conduct the analysis allowed to identify the most significant changes in management practices of Russian and global companies operating on the Russian market, as well as the dynamics of these changes related to the increasing complexity of the external business environment.
Importance
Russian cloud service market has a huge potential for growth but it is less surveyed as compared to developed countries markets. Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) provide a substantial demand for cloud services since traditional and expensive IT-solutions are less available for them. Thus, SMBs are of particular interest for researchers in the field.
Objectives
Conduct a segmentation analysis of Russian cloud service market and explain cloud services preferences of each segment.
Methods
From empirical study of 67 SMBs authors conducted analysis of Russian cloud services market by dividing it into segments with factor and cluster analysis methods.
Results
Based on collected data authors divided Russian cloud service market into three segments of companies. “Traditional” segment prefers simplicity and economy and shows small interest in remote work while adopting cloud services. “Transition” segment is highly oriented to remote work but has a lack of interest in stability of cloud services. ”Mobile” segment is interested in stable remote work along with functionality and availability of technical service from provider. That segment also shows small interest in simplicity of cloud services.
Conclusions and Relevance
Our findings might be a foundation for the future evaluation of Russian market attractiveness and strategy development of cloud services providers.