IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v49y2007i1p8-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Acquisitions and firm growth: Creating Unilever's ice cream and tea business

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey Jones
  • Peter Miskell

Abstract

The role of acquisitions has been widely discussed in management literature. There is considerable evidence that many acquisitions fail, often because of post-acquisition problems. More recently business historians have examined their role in the restructuring of the British, American and other economies after World War Two. Yet the historical and management literatures have been poorly integrated. This article seeks to address some of the issues raised in the management literature by contributing a longitudinal case study of the use of acquisitions by Unilever to build the world's largest ice cream and tea businesses. The study supports recent resource-based theory which argues that complementary rather than related acquisitions add value. It identifies the importance of local knowledge as a key complementary asset. It also identifies reasons why Unilever was able to integrate acquisitions quite successfully, including clear strategic intent and the fact that employee resistance was reduced because most acquisitions were agreed. Finally Unilever could take a long-term view because of its size, and relative unconcern for shareholder interests before the 1980s.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey Jones & Peter Miskell, 2007. "Acquisitions and firm growth: Creating Unilever's ice cream and tea business," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 8-28.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:49:y:2007:i:1:p:8-28
    DOI: 10.1080/00076790601062974
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076790601062974
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076790601062974?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lamoreaux,Naomi R., 1988. "The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521357654.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Varvara Nazarova, 2015. "Corporate Diversification Effect on Firm Value (Unilever Group Case Study)," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 16(1), pages 173-198, May.
    2. Nan Zhou & Seung H. Park, 2020. "Growth or profit? Strategic orientations and long‐term performance in China," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(11), pages 2050-2071, November.
    3. Van Cong Nguyen & Thi Ngoc Lan Nguyen & Thanh Hang Pham & Song Hoa Vu, 2019. "The Impacts of Selling Expense Structure on Enterprise Growth in Large Enterprises: A Study from Vietnam," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-22, December.

    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. Babina, Tania & Barkai, Simcha & Jeffers, Jessica & Karger, Ezra & Volkova, Ekaterina, 2023. "Antitrust enforcement increases economic activity," Working Papers 332, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    2. Viktorov, Ilja, 2009. "Mass Production, Economic Growth and Social Justice: Historical Lessons for Russia," Stockholm Papers in Economic History 3, Stockholm University, Department of Economic History.
    3. Leonardo M. Klüppel & Lamar Pierce & Jason A. Snyder, 2018. "Perspective—The Deep Historical Roots of Organization and Strategy: Traumatic Shocks, Culture, and Institutions," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(4), pages 702-721, August.
    4. Darai, D. & Roux, C. & Schneider, F., 2019. "Mergers, Mavericks, and Tacit Collusion," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1984, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    5. Soskice, David, 2020. "The American knowledge economy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 107102, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. George Deltas & Richard Sicotte, 2017. "Cartel Organization, Price Discrimination, and Selection of Transatlantic Migrants: 1899–1911," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(3), pages 668-704, January.
    7. Mary T. Rodgers & James E. Payne, 2020. "Post‐financial crisis changes in financial system structure: An examination of the J.P. Morgan & Co. Syndicates after the 1907 Panic," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(S1), pages 226-241, March.
    8. Bryer, Rob, 2013. "Americanism and financial accounting theory – Part 2: The ‘modern business enterprise’, America's transition to capitalism, and the genesis of management accounting," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 273-318.

    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:taf:bushst:v:49:y:2007:i:1:p:8-28. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    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.