ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge on innovation in Leveraged Buyout (LBO) companies with a particular analysis of management innovation (i.e., innovation in strategy, practices, organization and marketing). This area in innovation research is underexplored, with very few studies in the LBO context. Based on a multi-stage model of innovation, we contend that private equity firms are change agents and external knowledge sources which influence the emergence and adoption of management innovation. We thus hypothesize that, after a leveraged buyout, LBO companies should be more likely than non-LBO companies to introduce management innovations. In addition, we argue that, in order to ensure that targets can implement innovations brought by PE firms, target companies should exhibit higher-than-average absorptive capacity before the LBO. We use firm-level evidence from three rounds of the UK part of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) to validate our hypotheses empirically. The results of the analysis support these arguments.

中文翻译：

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杠杆收购公司的管理创新

摘要本文的目的是通过对管理创新（即策略，实践，组织和营销创新）的特殊分析来提高杠杆收购（LBO）公司的创新知识。创新研究的这一领域尚未得到充分开发，很少有关于杠杆收购的研究。我们基于创新的多阶段模型，认为私募股权公司是变革的推动者和外部知识源，它们会影响管理创新的出现和采用。因此，我们假设，在杠杆收购之后，杠杆收购公司比非杠杆收购公司更应该引入管理创新。此外，我们认为，为了确保目标可以实施私募股权公司带来的创新，目标公司在进行杠杆收购之前应表现出高于平均水平的吸收能力。我们使用来自社区创新调查（CIS）在英国的三轮调查中的公司级证据来凭经验验证我们的假设。分析结果支持这些论点。