Agency theory has focused on buyouts as a governance and control device to increase profitability, organizational efficiency and limited attention to growth. A strategic entrepreneurship view of buyouts incorporates upside incentives for value creation associated with growth as well as efficiency gains. In this paper, we develop the complementarity between agency theory and strategic entrepreneurship perspectives to examine the performance implications for different types of buyouts. Further, we study how the involvement of private equity firms is related to the performance of the postbuyout firm. These issues are examined for a sample of 238 private equity backed buyouts in the UK between 1993 and 2003. Implications for theory and practice are suggested.4

Financial theory, access to deal flow, selection, and monitoring skills are used to explain syndication in venture capital firms in six European countries. In contrast with U.S. findings, portfolio management motives are more important for syndication than individual deal management motives. Risk sharing, portfolio diversification, and access to larger deals are more important than selection and monitoring of deals. This holds for later stage and for early stage investors. Value adding is a stronger motive for syndication for early stage investors than for later stage investors, however. Nonlead investors join syndicates for the selection and value-adding skills of the syndicate partners.

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Research summary This study examines the role of resource orchestration for the exploration and exploitation of opportunities through portfolio entrepreneurship. Adopting a single‐case study approach, we identify eight distinctive resource orchestration subprocesses that we group into three aggregate resource orchestration processes that enable the development and exploitation of a set of resources and capabilities across a portfolio of ventures. Our findings extend the literature on enduring entrepreneurship by building theory on how resource orchestration across a portfolio of ventures facilitates the emergence of synergies when exploring and exploiting opportunities. Managerial summary This study examines the processes through which an entrepreneur structures and rearranges resources and capabilities across multiple firms as he/she grows a portfolio of firms to engage in the exploration and exploitation of market opportunities. Entrepreneurs can obtain insights for building their businesses from the eight processes we identify; these processes allow entrepreneurs to develop synergies as they create and put to use a set of resources and capabilities across their businesses. Through these synergies, entrepreneurs can share, transform, and harmonize resources and capabilities across their firms. This can enable them to continuously and simultaneously explore and exploit market opportunities, which ultimately facilitates the sustainability of their businesses. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.