Types of Operational Relatedness, Core Business Industry,and Performance

In the second major analysis of this study, I pay particular attention to two issues that are important to a more comprehensive understanding of the diversificationperformance linkage. These issues had to be neglected in the meta-analyses given the lack of respective empirical material that could be used for contingency variable analysis: effects of types of relatedness and effects of industry. In addition, I add to the analysis a market-based performance measure that promises greatest possible content validity in terms of capturing synergy realization: Berger and Ofek’s excess value measure which can indicate whether a multibusiness firm trades at the so-called diversification discount.