Darryl Laws News

  The following questionnaire will require approximately twenty minutes to complete. There is no compensation for responding nor is there any known risk. In order to ensure that all information will remain confidential, please do not include your name. Copies of the project will be provided to my Pepperdine University advisors David Smith, PhD and Richard Walton, PhD.  If you choose to participate in this project, please answer all questions as honestly as possible and return the completed questionnaires promptly <insert method of return, such as or provided stamped envelope. Participation is strictly voluntary and you may refuse to participate at any time.  Justification for the selection of the use of a Likert Scale . Likert scale measurements of human attitude are the examples of scales in psychometrics used widely in the social science and educational research spaces. The Likert scale was devised in order to measure attitude in a scientifically accepted and valida...

  Phase II – Qualitative will start with face to face personal interviews of fifteen (15) elite purposeful participants, 2) retrieval archival data on M&A transactions and end with 3) the collection of results from the empirical observation of a real time M&A transaction negotiations. For the qualitative data collection:  Initial contact will be made by telephone.  This will be followed by my sending each participant an e-mail containing an IRB Consent Form for the participants execution and return.  Subsequent to my receipt of the IRB Consent Form I will commence arranging interviews, A questionnaire will be sent by e-mail to each interviewee in advance of their face-to face interview, Face to face interviews will be conducted by me personally with all fifteen elite purposeful sampling participants. Hand written notes will used to capture the information from the participants and to denote any research thoughts. (Charmaz, 2006). No videos or photos will be ...

  Each will possess firsthand experience in working with and dealing with irrational human behavior; particularly buyside CEOs exhibiting  overconfidence and hubris as well as private equity fund managers (buyside) irrational exuberance. Questionnaire bias will be minimized by the use of non-technical jargon and clear concise questions.  Non-response error and bias will be mitigated by providing the electronic respondent with an “user ID” and the storage of their response and all data on my firm’s private servers. Telephonic follow up will be used to contact these individuals to prompt their response. Interviewer bias will be obviated by the use of a web-based questionnaire.   Systematic error will be reduced by the questionnaire construct not being skedded toward anyone type of measurement.  The construct of my questionnaire avoids dichotomous questions and balances between open-ended and closed ended questions.   There are no forced choices in ...

    The sample frame – My elite purposeful sample M&A experts will be extracted from an aggregate list of M&A and Private Equity industry professionals whom are registered with FINRA (IBs and PE fund managers) and or lawyers registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange. All of which have under gone FBI background checks and financial scrutiny. CEOs of acquisitive private companies will either be introduced to me by PE fund managers or come from my pre-existing relationships. I will consider on an ongoing basis how the sample frame can be updated and whether or not it contains information that can improve the survey. Units of analysis -  The selection criteria for inclusion in the elite purposeful sample of fifteen (15) participants who will come from: private equity and M&A professionals that are  leaders in their respective fields of private equity fund management, acquisitive corporate CEOs, M&A investment bankers and M&A lawyers); whom can ar...

  Sample Method, Sample Frame, Sample size.  Sample. For my mixed-mode survey I intend to use a combination of a web-based survey questionnaire with telephonic follow up to assure a higher response level. Additionally,  I intend to use the same elite purposeful sample of fifteen (15) expert M&A professional participants that I am using for my face-to-face interviews. The sample will be extracted from the nationwide population of  Private Equity funds managers of approximately 6,800 firms and M&A Investment Bankers, both of whom are FINRA registered and private company CEOs in addition to U.S. Securities Exchange registered attorneys. An elite purposeful sampling is commonly used in qualitative research for which the number of participants will be selected according to the needs of the study ( Glaser & Strauss, 1991). Researchers choose participants who give a richness of information that is suitable for detailed research (Patton, 1980). Although is a no...

I had to determine the method of investigation. I settled for a mixed mode, web-based survey coupled with a telephonic follow up method to encourage a greater response level (Dillman, 2014). Incentives may be considered to increase response level (Goritz, 200).  I had previously constructed a concept map so that in refining my research questions and identifying my independent, dependent, moderating and mediating variables so that I could develop questions that would extract the desired data that I am seeking. The next challenge was that I had to think about crafting the questions for each of my web-based survey and my personal interviews to make sure that I was extracting the information sought (opinions, behavior, attitudes).  This was followed with thoughts of how to best organize the format of my survey instrument as such that questions were cluster in groups of similar lines of thought.  Then I had to begin thinking about the survey software that I would use to record...

  Motivation. I want to step back from my daily private equity fund manager demands and take a pause to understand what motivates buyer’s and seller’s interactions in mergers and acquisitions transactions and the impact of their decisions.  In the 1980’s I worked on hostile take-overs for the Belzberg brothers when The Art of War , Sun Tsu (496 BC),  “ Know thy self, know thy enemy . The opportunity of defeating our enemy is provided by the enemy themselves ” was the bible for tactical strategy and decision theory. Thus, conscious and subconscious decision-making processes are in my view are important topics that few researchers have considered how they impact upon mergers and acquisitions premium prices. Works by Cyert and March (1963) gave birth to two major alternatives perspectives: rationality and bounded rationality decision making . Eisenhardt (1992) probed further into political, power and the garbage can model (Cohen , 1972) for decision-making, claiming that...