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In this study, we examine the impact of analysts' recommendations on a critical decision faced by firms: the choice between conformity and distinctiveness. Integrating perspectives from both the strategy school of thought, advocating for uniqueness, and institutional theory, emphasizing conformity for legitimacy, we argue that, following analyst downgrades, firms may shift towards strategic distinctiveness or conformity depending on contextual factors that shape their interpretation of those recommendations. We find that, in this situation, firms tend to adopt strategic distinctiveness, when led by a powerful CEO, have strong financial performance, are categorized by investors as a growth stock, and operate in highly competitive industries. Our study contributes to the literature by providing a contextual understanding of analysts' impact on firm strategies. We also make a methodological contribution by devising a novel measure for strategic distinctiveness by employing topic modeling techniques on earnings call transcripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among different types of CEO turnovers, performance-related CEO dismissals are usually a response to the request by unhappy shareholders to turn around a troubled firm. This may have negative long-term consequences for firms if the pressure to deliver short-term returns disincentivizes newly appointed CEOs from pursuing relatively risky and uncertain, but important, long-term growth strategies. In this study, we find in particular that performance-related CEO dismissals reduce firms' innovation activities. We also argue that corporate governance structures that insulate the board and the new CEO from pressures by shareholders can reverse or weaken this negative relationship. Using a sample of CEO turnover events among S&P 1500 firms over 18 years, we show that (only) performance-related CEO dismissal have a long-lasting negative effect on the amount of innovation a firm produces starting from the year immediately following the dismissal. Our results also show that the presence of informed institutional investors, high voting power of directors, and the existence of a family relative of the CEO among the board of directors, will reverse or weaken the negative effect of performance-related CEO dismissal on innovation. We provide several robustness tests to rule out alternative explanations. The paper thus provides important insights into the long-term consequences of the CEO dismissals for firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As all firms compete for scarce resources, many biotechnology firms strive to obtain higher amounts of financial capital through partnerships with big pharma companies. This paper takes a close look at the technological resources of the biotechnology firm and asks whether their "depth" and "breadth" impact the amount of financial capital the firm receives from its big pharma alliance partner. Results show that technological depth is associated with raising more financial capital, whereas breadth is related to less money. More interestingly, when combined with a well-developed technological project, both depth and breadth are positively related with the financial capital raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]