Opposing positions in M&A research: culture, integration and performance

Abstract

Purpose -"Culture" has become a critical factor for success in today's international business environment. In particular, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are known to suffer from a high failure rate, due to culture differences. Studies on M&As suggest different and often controversial relationships between culture, integration and performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify major sources of inconsistent results, thereby providing promising directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach -Findings are based on an extensive literature review including 58 papers from 20 learned international journals. Main selection criteria were keywords (merger/acquisitions and integration/culture) applied to the database "EBSCO Business Source Premier" and the h-index calculated with the help of Harzing's Publish or Perish. Each article was coded and categorized. Findings -The analyzed articles reveal three major reasons for the inconsistent findings in M&A research: first, most scholars refer to "integration" as an umbrella term for different and distinctive acculturation strategies, e.g. integration, assimilation, separation and marginalization; second, some studies mix different levels of analysis with respect to culture constructs, e.g. national vs organizational culture; and finally, there exist various definitions of "M&A success", which become manifest in a plethora of measurement techniques. Originality/value -The paper identifies and discusses potential reasons why the culture-performance debate in M&A research has not yet provided a consistent conclusion. This article helps to better understand the current perception of culture in radical change processes within organizations. Promising future research directions are outlined, which should help to extend and specify current knowledge about culture as well as its impact on M&A success.

Cross-Cultural Management Studies: State of the Field in the Four Research Paradigms*

“…Researchers continue to identify convincing patterns (Weber, Tarba, and Reichel 2009) and propose further developments, for example, the perceived status of national cultures in interactions in M&A (Yildiz 2014). The complex nature of M&A and the various influencing factors mediating the role of culture continue to provide rich opportunities for investigation (Dauber 2012).…”

A Fuzzy Cognitive Maps Approach for Analyzing the Integration of Two Organizations of the Same Corporation

“…By defining the "integration success" as the most central concept of all 78 variables our paper refers to the success of the target organization ST therefore fills in a gap in the research literature. However, if most studies use key performance indicators like "return on assets, return on sales, number of new products launched, productivity of employees, sales growth" Dauber [21] the current research presents, similar to Arjen [22], the integration success as the perception of the management of the acquired organization. However, compared to Arjen, we use a fuzzy approach which does not allow to define precisely what the "integration success" is as in the quantitative research done by Arjen but we are able to show the path to positively influence this fuzzy concept called "integration success".…”

“…Dauber [21] makes a review of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) literature and points out that the most addressed M&A concepts are related to the level of integration, organizational culture and different forms of integration.…”

“…On one side, promote that "a higher level of integration is associated with higher synergy realization, thus with higher performance" [21]. On the other side [21] "emphasize that high levels of integration lead to more disruption". Our article shows that the high integration at strategy and portfolio level led to very strong or strong increase of integration success.…”

Utjecaj korporativne kulture na uspješnost spajanja i preuzimanja

“…Organizacije su i same članice društva i stoga s kolektivom dijele određene vrijednosti nacionalne kulture. Također, izložene su društvenom pritisku da se, barem djelomično, usklade s vrijednostima nacionalne kulture (Dauber, 2012. ).…”