Mergers & Acquisitions: The roles of cultural/relational fit and human integration in cultural/relational convergence and organizational commitment.

摘要

Extensive Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) research exists on how financial constructs affect the performance of M&As. However, research is more limited when it comes to understanding how behavioral constructs affect M&As. Therefore, this study examines six behavioral constructs: cultural and relational fit, cultural and relational convergence, the human integration process, and organizational commitment. Cultural/relational fit and cultural/relational convergence were investigated before and after the consummation of three organizational acquisitions; and, of the 883 employees surveyed, 601 completed the survey. The purpose of this study is to examine behavioral constructs and the role they play in the success of merging organizations.;The results revealed that cultural convergence predicted cultural fit and the human integration process; the human integration process predicted cultural fit; organizational commitment predicted cultural convergence; relational convergence (Communal Sharing [CS], Authority Ranking [AR], Equality Matching [EM], and Market Pricing [MP]) predicted relational fit (CS, AR, EM, and MP); and the human integration process post-acquisition partially mediated the relationship between cultural fit pre-acquisition and cultural convergence post-acquisition. However, the human integration process post-acquisition does not mediate the relationship between relational fit (CS, AR, EM, and MP) pre-acquisition and relational convergence (CS, AR, EM, and MP) post-acquisition. Also, relational fit (CS, AR, EM and MP) did not show a significant effect on the human integration process; the human integration process did not show a significant effect on relational convergence (AR, EM and MP); and relational convergence (CS, AR, EM, and MP) did not show a significant effect on organizational commitment. However, these findings support the notion that behavioral constructs matter when merging organizations.