مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد انگیزه های ادغام و اکتساب و ارزیابی نتیجه – وایلی 2018

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are significant for companies involved in the deals, but also for national economies and industrial structures (Buckley & Ghauri, 2002; Caiazza, Shimizu, & Yoshikawa, 2017). Strategically, they reconfigure industries, reshape corporate structures, transform organizational cultures, and affect individual careers (Marks & Mirvis, 2001). In contrast with the important volume of transactions taking place across the world, available studies indicate that M&As do not necessarily enhance the value of acquiring firms. For example, Bertrand and Betschinger (2012) show that M&As increase the value of target firms, while the outcome is less clear for acquirers. Several scholars argue that factors used for performance measurement are inaccurate, which may explain inconsistencies in empirical findings (Berkovitch & Narayanan, 1993; Brouthers, van Hastenburg, & van den Ven, 1998; Deng, 2010; Lin & Chou, 2016). The terms merger and acquisition are often used as synonyms, even if there exist some differences between the two types of operation: in a merger, two companies agree to form one single company (both companies lose their independence), whereas in an acquisition, one company purchases another firm (and thus becomes its owner). M&A research has remained under criticism for insufficient theory development (Faulkner, Teerikangas, & Joseph, 2012; Schweiger & Goulet, 2001). The debates in the literature concern questions related to how M&A outcome is measured (Meglio & Risberg, 2011; Very, 2011; Zollo & Meier, 2008), how M&As perform (King, Dalton, Daily, & Covin, 2004; Trichterborn, KnyphausenAufseß, & Schweizer, 2016), and which factors explain M&A performance (Chalençon, 2017; Haleblian, Devers, McNamara, Carpenter, & Davison, 2009). Trautwein (1990) suggests that research on M&As should focus more on process-related aspects than on efficiencyrelated issues. This research attempts to contribute to a better understanding of merger outcome (or performance) and its assessment (or measurement). The objective is twofold: (a) to investigate how companies define merger motives and whether they are used to assess merger outcome, and (b) to determine if the alignment of merger motives with merger outcome allows assessing performance in a more accurate way. Our empirical study focuses on cross-border M&As involving acquirers and target companies from European countries and the United States. It follows an exploratory research design (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Ghauri & Grønhaug, 2010) and takes the form of four case studies in the information and communications technology industry. Data were mainly collected through semistructured interviews with key managers of acquiring firms and completed by the analysis of internal and external documents. The findings of our research indicate that M&A outcome can be more accurately measured by aligning it with the motives defined by the acquiring firm. They show that it is necessary to determine M&A motives in an appropriate way and then link them with outcome assessment factors. While several earlier studies are based on resource-based view (RBV) and transaction cost economics (TCE) (Ahammad, Tarba, Liu, Glaister, & Cooper, 2016), our theoretical framework is based on evaluation theory developed by Scriven (1991) and Chelimsky (1997). Moreover, while most previous studies on merger motives are based on quantitative surveys (Brouthers et al., 1998; Gaffney, Karst, & Clampit, 2016), this research adopts a process perspective including premerger and postmerger phases and shows how the M&A motive-defining process can influence the assessment of merger outcome. We will first present the literature review and the elaborated research model. We will then explain the research methodology before analyzing and discussing major findings of our qualitative study.