The thesis examines the effect of complementary resources between acquiring and target firms of mergerslacquisitions both on the short-term, ex ante, stock market-based performance and long-term, ex post, accounting-based operating performance. Based on the mergers/acquisitions samples from technology-intensive sector during 1984–1996, this study found that a firm's financial and marketing resources coupled with the merger partner firm's technological resources had a significant and positive impact on merger performance, whereas the combination of operational and technological resources did not positively affect M/A performance.; This report contributes to the literature concerned with the value creation of M/As, particularly in the technology-intensive sector by examining the complementary effect of different categories of resources between merger/acquisition partners (i.e., direct complementarity) rather than the level of discrepancy (or difference) in the same resources between the two merging firms (i.e., reciprocal complementarity), which has been the typical criterion so far when strategy researchers investigated the complementarities of resources or capabilities. Our results possibly explain the inconsistent results in prior research on the performance differences between related vs. unrelated M/As. This study also suggests that, when evaluating potential target firms, corporate managers who pursue an acquisitive growth strategy may benefit more by concentrating on the complementarities in resource flows between acquiring and target firms rather than the similarities in products or strategy types.
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