Recent Submissions

  • Liquidity or profitability: How retail investors can shape liquidity risk models in times of high interest rates

    Roméro Diaz, Nicolas; De Bondt, Jan; Veredas, David (2023)
    The great success of the one-year “Staatsbon” or government bond was caused by the low deposit rates at Belgian banks and the reduction in withholding tax (from 30% to 15%). This forced banks to revise their deposit rates and give up profitability, or to retain the low rates and lose liquidity. Investor demand for high-interest, fixed-income instruments means that banks need to readjust their risk models and compete with sovereign and private sector alternatives.
  • How to get your employer to invest in your training and development

    Jordaan, Barney (2022)
    If you need to ask your employer to invest in your development, our white paper explains how to go about it. Because learning new approaches doesn’t just benefit you – it benefits your employer too.
  • Brand religions. Is it time to choose yours?

    Goedertier, Frank (2022)
    If you’re taking your first steps into brand management, it can be challenging to even know how to start. And there can be a temptation to try to embrace all approaches to brand strategy – or switch between them as you develop your own brand identity. By thinking of branding as a religion, organisations can find focus externally and internally – which can drive business success. The big question is, which religion will be best for your organisation? This white paper gives organisations the ability to consider clearly which brand religion may work for them, and choose a principal approach that provides focus for the rest of the organisation.
  • Building purpose-driven organisations. The new frontier

    Dewettinck, Koen (2022)
    Purpose can provide a North Star for an organisation – a consistent point of reference in an otherwise changeable business environment. It also creates certainty about what an organisation stands for and wants to achieve. In this white paper you'll learn how to become a purpose-built organisation that measurably improves business outcomes.
  • Decision-making on ESG criteria in executive remuneration: Board perspectives

    Baeten, Xavier; Van Hove, Marthe; Loyens, Said (2023)
    This white paper investigates how boards decide on the inclusion of ESG (environmental – social – governance) criteria in executive incentive systems. ESG-driven incentives relate executive remuneration to a firm’s societal responsibilities and towards a broader set of stakeholders such as local communities, employees, customers, and the environment. Listed firms are increasingly adopting these criteria, but several important questions still remain regarding the reasons why boards adopt them and the challenges they face.
  • Walking on the dark side of the moon. A day in the life of DEI manager

    Boros, Smaranda; Gorbatai, Andreea (2023)
    In recent years (especially after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020), companies have stepped up their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) awareness and practices. We see more and more job openings for DEI managers. When we talk to DEI professionals, we see that the DEI team has often moved from a voluntary entity to an integral part of the organigram – with KPIs, strategy, budget and paid workload for its members. At the same time, in the wake of new economic crises, we read more and more in the news of DEI functions being reduced or axed altogether. Earlier in 2023, Ellen McGirt reported on the findings from Revelio Labs that “a 33% churn rate for DEI-related roles at more than 600 companies engaged in layoffs, compared to 21% for non-DEI roles”. No wonder then that on 15 May 2023, when we met 22 members of the Diversity Managers Association of Belgium (DMAB), from 20 companies across over 12 different sectors (from public transport and finance to distribution and pharma, including DEI managers for non-profits) on our Brussels campus, to talk about the wellbeing and career sustainability of the DEI manager, naming the workshop “the dark side of the moon” turned out to be very appropriate. Most DEI professionals are doing what they do because there is a personal story fuelling the passion. Often enough, they have the experience of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ - either relating to themselves or their family. Which means that what we do is not a job; it has real stakes. On the bright side, this brings passion and resilience. On the dark side, it brings disappointment when change is slow, pain when you can’t make the difference you set out to make, and guilt when you are too tired to carry on. Social justice is not an empty noun. It is personal. With this white paper we invite you to take a walk on the ‘dark side’ of DEI implementation challenges, and explore together with us the challenges of such projects, and identify specific actions that DEI managers and organisations can take to address the complexities of DEI strategy execution.
  • Strategy implementation - Leveraging people in adaptive strategy

    Peeters, Carine; Hamilton, Brett; Weiss, Martin (2023)
    Strategy is about making fundamental choices on where to play and how to win to realise an organisation’s goals, and to deliver results within the context of those choices. This identifies two elements of the strategy process: Formulation (thinking) and implementation (doing)
  • Digital twins in the supply chain

    Vanderheyden, Karlien; Vereecke, Ann (2023)
    Launched on 11 April 1970, the Apollo 13 was nearly 56 hours into its flight to the Moon when an oxygen tank in the spacecraft’s service module exploded, forcing the crew to abandon their planned lunar landing and focus instead on finding a way to return safely to Earth. Thanks to the combined efforts of the astronauts on board and the Mission Control team at NASA, they made it: the proposed workarounds and recovery solutions were all first validated on the ground using simulators – copies, or twins, of the actual spacecraft and its components. But these twins were physical twins. Today, with the advancement and proliferation of digital technologies, digital twins are all the rage. What are they and how can they be used? These and other questions were answered in the webinar ‘Beyond the traditional supply chain: exploring the potential of digital twins’, organised by the Vlerick Centre for Smart People in the Smart Supply Chain.
  • Price-cost margins and fixed costs

    Abraham, Filip; Bormans, Yannick; Konings, Jozef; Roeger, Werner (2020)
    This paper introduces a new method which allows to simultaneously estimate price-cost margins and fixed costs in production, using standard production data on expenditures of inputs and revenue at the firm level. In particular, we exploit properties of the primal and dual price based and cost based Solow residual, in which we allow not only for the flexible treatment of capital (either fixed, variable or a combination of both) but also for the flexible treatment of other input factors, such as labor and intermediate inputs. We use a 30 year long firm level panel of Belgian firms to estimate price-cost margins and fixed costs as a share of revenue to show the following key results: Ignoring fixed costs in production, as in most of the literature, underestimates price-cost margins and overestimates excess profit margins. We also find that fixed costs as well as price-cost margins decline in the last three decades, pushing excess profit margins downwards, suggesting highly competitive markets in Belgium.
  • Price-cost margins and fixed costs

    Abraham, Filip; Bormans, Yannick; Konings, Jozef; Roeger, Werner (2021)
    This paper provides a new method to estimate price-cost margins in the presence of fixed costs of production. We exploit properties of the primal and dual revenue based and cost based Solow residual. Ignoring fixed costs in production underestimates price-cost margins and overestimates excess profit margins. Using a 30 year panel of Belgian firms we estimate price cost margins of 25.9% on average, with fixed costs as a fraction of sales of 23.4%. Fixed costs as well as price-cost margins have declined in the last three decades, pushing excess profit margins close to zero, suggesting competitive markets. The presence of fixed costs implies that price-cost margins might change not only due to a change in firms' market power, but also due to changes in the production process (i.e., the mix between variable and fixed costs) or even due to a combination of both. Our novel methodology is able to distinguish these underlying mechanisms, thereby providing an additional layer of insight to the ongoing academic and policy debate on firms' market power.
  • Acquisitions by financial versus strategic buyers: Interest, competition, and persistence during the private bidding process

    De Maeseneire, Wouter; Dereeper, Sebastien; Luypaert, Mathieu; Thuy Nguyen, Mai (2023)
    We explore how target firm attributes affect the interest of financial versus strategic bidders in the private stages of a corporate takeover process. Using a unique set of hand-collected data from 606 US public deals from 2005 to 2016, we demonstrate the difference between strategic and financial bidder attraction from deal initiation onwards, as such unaffected by deal process characteristics or pricing strategies. Our results indicate that the target firm’s sales growth rate, cash flow generation, and technological innovation are found to influence financial versus strategic bidder interest from the start of the private process, whereas industry outperformance, market-to-book, and leverage seem to particularly affect the persistence of financial bidders throughout the deal process. In general, targets with stand-alone value-improving potential and opportunities to exploit financial leverage benefits are more likely to attract financial buyers while targets with probable synergy gains appeal more to strategic bidders.
  • When do founders adopt buyout terms?

    Subotic, Marjana; Collewaert, Veroniek; Korsgaard, A. (2023)
  • Innovation strategy and founding team compensation

    Albuja, Andrea; Collewaert, Veroniek; Vanacker, Tom (2023)
  • Practices of European venture capitalists

    Söderblom, Anna; Le Pendeven, Benjamin; Verbouw, Jeroen (2023)
    The European venture capital (VC) market picked up and proliferated after the 2008 economic breakdown but faced a sharp slowdown in the second half of 2022 and 2023. Starting the recovery from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine elevated geopolitical tensions and caused a global economic slowdown. As for many other industries, the increasing macroeconomic volatility, with rising inflation and supply disruptions, has severely affected the venture capital market. At the same time, groundbreaking changes are taking place in society, not least the emergence of new technologies, that create opportunities for VC investors. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and deep-tech are just a few. The investor landscape for startups is also changing rapidly, with new types of investors entering the scene, such as new forms of corporate VCs, special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), and super business angels. To get a better understanding of the VC landscape, leading European business schools and universities have joined their efforts and conducted a broad study of VC practices in Europe. In this report, we present our findings on how European venture capitalists select, value, and structure investment deals, what type of value added activities they provide, and how successful they are with their investments. We highlight similarities and differences among various types of VCs, of different sizes, investment focuses, and locations. For thorough statistical analysis as well as elaborate discussions and academic explanations behind the results, we refer to the research papers being developed based on the data from this study.
  • HR Barometer 2021. HRM trends and challenges in Belgian organisations

    Trbovic, Nikola; Volckaert, Ellen; Buyens, Dirk; Defever, Emmy (2021)
    Hudson and Vlerick Business School publish their HR Barometer annually to identify the most significant HR trends and challenges of the previous year. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the past year an exceptional one for everyone. In uncertain times, it was a challenge to set the right priorities. What impact did COVID-19 have on the performance of HR? Our online survey resulted in 104 organisations sharing their experiences and concerns. This year, the HR Barometer covered no less than 363,631 employees in Belgium through these organisations.
  • Reskilling, upskilling and outskilling within the context of digital transformation

    Defever, Emmy; Quataert, Sarah; Vandenbroucke, Astrid; Buyens, Dirk; Dewettinck, Koen (2022)
    With organisations facing continuous change triggered by ongoing digital transformation, reskilling, upskilling and outskilling are turning out to be imperative. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated much of what was predicted about the future of work into a considerably shorter time frame. Supporting your employees to move into future opportunities through reskilling, upskilling or outskilling is part of managing a successful talent strategy. Companies worldwide are providing, on average, reskilling and upskilling initiatives to 62% of their workforce. In addition, we see the emergence of a new approach to outplacement — ‘outskilling’ — which is designed to give employees at high risk of layoff the skills and support needed to land another high-growth job. In this white paper, we will share some of the insights gained throughout the research and activities of the Vlerick Centre for Excellence in Strategic Talent Management. We will first zoom in on the definition of, and business case for, reskilling, upskilling and outskilling. Next, we will highlight 8 action steps for HR in developing their re-, up- or outskilling strategy. These 8 action steps provide a roadmap to shape your re-, up- or outskilling initiatives. Each step in the roadmap builds on those that come before. However, as the business landscape is evolving quickly, it is recommended to regularly revisit the steps to verify whether the approach should be adjusted to a new business reality.
  • Shadow boards in talent management

    Vandenbroucke, Astrid; Buyens, Dirk; Quataert, Sarah; Dewettinck, Koen (2022)
    Despite the influx of younger generations in our workforce, many companies are still run solely by a traditional board of directors. Though they are packed with experience and wisdom, it is sometimes hard for board members to escape the ivory tower. When this happens, the existing board of directors might not stay closely attuned to the latest developments, such as demographics, product or service development, technology, or marketing. It seems many organisations struggle with the same challenges: How to successfully integrate the younger generations’ insights? How to create career perspectives in delayering organisations? And how to stay ahead of disruption in the digital marketplace, with a slow or sometimes weak response to changing market conditions? Shadow boards were created to provide answers to these questions. In essence, a shadow board is a group of non-executive employees, regardless of level, that works together (or in parallel) with senior executives on strategic initiatives. They typically receive the same agenda as the executive committee to be sure to avoid group thinking in the existing executive committee. As such, they will challenge organisations to think about their business or operations from a new paradigm. The purpose is to leverage the younger group’s insights and to diversify the perspectives that executives are exposed to. Synonyms for shadow boards are shadow executive board, shadow comex/codir/excom, millennial excom, millennial board, excom-Y, or mirror board. Vlerick’s Centre for Excellence in Strategic Talent Management studied the appearance of shadow boards in Belgian organisations. Our respondents indicated that shadow boards exist in different formats and can deviate from the definition we find in the literature. This white paper discusses the origin of the shadow board, the added value that it can bring to the organisation, and how to effectively integrate it into the talent development process. Some national and international cases are highlighted to show the different forms a shadow board can take and inspire organisations eager to build one themselves.
  • Manging the bumps in the DEI Journey

    D’Hooghe, Eline; Vandemoortele, Marie; Vandenbroucke, Astrid; Buyens, Dirk (2023)
    Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are some of the most discussed topics when talking about the current workforce in our societies. We see cases going from unconscious bias and discrimination in the recruitment process to bullying and harassment in the workplace. Despite the abundance of literature on DEI, many organisations are left wondering where to put their focus in the first place. This whitepaper contributes to deciding which interventions are your best bet for increasing workplace diversity, equity and inclusion.
  • Het besluitvormingsproces van investeringen in ziekenhuizen

    Cardoen, Brecht; Van Haute, Ester; Gemmel, Paul (2020)

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