چه کسی دستیابی به چه کسی دارد؟ - شواهد تجربی اثر اندازه شرکت بر ادغام B2B و وظایف بازاریابی / فروش

A recent study has revealed a marked growth in global mergers and acquisitions between firms from developed and developing countries. Unlike previous merger waves, however, companies in emerging markets are playing an increasingly important role. This highlights the need for greater scrutiny of more, and diverse, aspects of mergers. In particular, the size difference between firms involved in mergers and its impact on merger outcomes are of interest. This paper examines whether the involvement of differing numbers of employees (either from the acquiring firm or from the acquired firm) may influence merger success. Drawing on previous work in understanding organizational culture and merger dynamics, we conduct a laboratory experiment that not only confirms the presence of learning and conflict in organizational cultures in mergers but also presents new findings in relation to the relative size of the firms involved.

According to A.T. Kearney's study (Rothenbuecher & Hoyningen-Huene, 2008) of global mergers and acquisitions (M&A), deals between developing and developed countries grew at an annual rate of 19% since. This far exceeded the industry average, and was four times faster than deals conducted within either developing or developed countries alone. More interestingly, the study found that smaller companies from developing countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa are snapping up larger and established firms in developed countries at a surprising rate. In 2007 almost 20% of the 2168 acquisitions recorded were driven by companies from developing countries. Furthermore, this pattern is growing by 26% annually. Thus, rising competitor firms from emerging economies may present a greater potential threat to established companies in developed countries, and will certainly form a much greater component of future merger activity. We therefore call for a greater scrutiny of the diverse aspects of mergers — in particular the size difference between firms involved in mergers and its role in determining the mergers' outcomes. Given the dearth of M&A research which explores the organizational culture aspects of the merger process, and criticisms of the ability to measure and test organizational culture (Buono and Bowditch, 1989, Cartwright and Cooper, 1990, Cartwright and Cooper, 1995, Clougherty and Duso, 2009, Larsson and Finkelstein, 1999, Napier, 1988, Schweiger and DeNisi, 1991, Schweiger et al., 1987, Vaara, 2002 and Weber and Camerer, 2003), the work of Weber and Camerer (2003) is notable because it introduces a procedure for growing organizational culture in a laboratory environment and examines how subjects create their “homeland languages” in organizations (Camerer & Weber, 2008). They conducted an experiment where they allowed subjects in ‘firms’ to develop an organizational culture, and then merged two such firms. As they expected, performance decreased following the merger. Their study provides experimental evidence that the conflict between the organizational cultures of the firms involved in a merger can be a major factor for post-merger performance deterioration. However, despite its significant contribution in providing experimental evidence of this conflict as a reason for merger failures, their research does not take into consideration the effect of relative size and employee composition in the merger, as each merger consisted of two employees from the acquiring firm and one employee from the acquired firm. Indeed, Weber and Camerer (2003) found that the difference in pre-and post-merger completion times in the merger sessions is unlikely to be due to a pure group-size effect (p. 410). Therefore, their experimental investigation on the negative influence of conflict of organizational cultures on merger outcomes rests on employee compositions in post-merged firms that are symmetrical (i.e. one manager from the acquiring firm plus one employee each from the two respective firms), and fails to reflect more diverse and different employee compositions in post-merger firms where symmetry is not present. In reality, mergers between asymmetrical partners are the more common phenomena (Smeets, Ierulli, & Gibbs, 2006). Moreover, in cross-border mergers and acquisitions by emerging market firms, it is often the case that the acquiring firm has a smaller presence than the target firm in the local market, regardless of its global presence (Aulakh et al., 2000, Cuervo-Cazurra et al., 2007, Guillén, 2002, Uhlenbruck et al., 2006 and Vermeulen and Barkema, 2001). According to Dackert, Jackson, Brenner, and Johansson (2003), both groups involved in the merger expect one group to be dominant after the merger and organizational members form perceptions about their merger partner's organizational culture and its dominance, even prior to integration. Subsequently they use these preconceptions to structure the post-merger reality. Cartwright and Cooper (1993) note that when an acquired firm is the smaller merger partner, it wholly adopts the changes that are introduced by the acquiring firm. Under this particular type of merger, success depends upon displacing the organizational culture of the smaller partner (Pikula, 1999). Then, one might wonder what the outcome would be if the acquiring firm was smaller than the target firm, regardless of the superiority of the acquirer's practices or procedures as compared to the acquiring firm. This is an intriguing question to answer considering the recent trend in global M&A that will form a much greater component of future merger activity. We argue that the relative firm size of the partners — an involvement of a different number of employees (either from the acquiring firm or from the acquired firm) — has a significant influence on merger outcomes. Our objective therefore is to examine whether the involvement of asymmetric numbers of employees from the acquiring firm and from the acquired firm would result in different findings from those of Weber and Camerer (2003). To this end, we conducted a laboratory experiment to examine equal and unequal employee compositions in the post-merger firms while confirming the earlier finding on the negative influence of conflict of organizational cultures on merger outcomes.

While our results have been useful in confirming earlier findings regarding the negative impact of the conflict in organizational cultures on post-merger firm performance, we have also established a deeper understanding of the nature of such conflict. We found that it is not a permanent feature, and may be related to the overall size and time period of the merger in question. This is because we believe that collaborative learning between employees compensates for the negative impact of the conflict in organizational cultures on post-merger performance. These findings indicate that the conflict in organizational cultures is only temporarily influential in affecting post-merger performance, and that organizational support to encourage the development of collaborative learning between individual members in the organization should be another strategic consideration for firms that want to surpass others in competition, as well as facilitating a more successful integration that makes the most of merger synergies. Organizational support to encourage the development of collaborative learning between individual organizational members should be a strategic consideration for firms that want to surpass others in competition as well as to successfully integrate different entities for merger synergies. We found that cultural dominance originating from the distinct and sustainable development of organizational culture is present in the post-merger firm when the merger is composed of unequal partners. If dominating post-merger firm structures are common in the real world, firms should build informed strategies to manage the post-merger integration process for successful mergers. This study confirms that the conflict in organizational cultures can be one of the major reasons for the post-merger firm performance deterioration. More importantly, this study identifies that post-merger firm structure also plays an important role in the merger's performance. The firm size effect on merger performance has not been seriously discussed in merger research and thus our findings make an important contribution to the literature.