• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.85-97
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• 2015

This study examined the effects of outside directors and CEO duality on acquisition strategies and performance of Korean firms in high-technology industry. Based on the resource dependence theory, we focused on the service and resource-dependence roles from board of directors in the process of decision-making of acquisition strategies. In addition, CEO opportunism behavior rises when CEO serves as chairperson of board and induces the negative effects on acquisition performance. Specifically, we investigated the interaction effects between outside directors ratio and CEO duality. For the period of 2004 to 2012, 246 acquisitions of Korean firms in high-technology industry were analyzed to test our intended hypotheses. Our results indicate that there exist positive relationship between outside director ratio and acquisition performance for Korean high-technology firms. Negative associations prevail between CEO duality and performance consequences of acquisitions. While outside director ratio has a positive effect on acquisition performance when there is a presence of CEO duality, negative effect prevail for outside director ratio on acquisition performance in the absence of CEO duality position to hold our interaction hypothesis. The favor of dual structure can be explained with implications referring to unity of command and strong leadership driven from CEO duality that enhances the resource dependence roles of board of directors in the context of high-technology industry acquisition behaviors rendered by Korean firms.