The role of social captital in cross-cultural M&As:a multinational corporation perspective

摘要

This paper advances a social capital perspective to the literature on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). A conceptualisation of social capital is used that encompasses internal and external social capital as the two sources of social capital available to Multinational Corporations (MNCs) that undertake M&As across cultures. A theoretical model is developed which suggests that internal and external social capital mitigate the negative effects of organisational and national cultural differences on sociocultural integration and so enable MNCs to exploit opportunities for cultural arbitrage which, in turn, contributes to the performance of M&As. This paper further forwards a dynamic perspective of M&As by considering these transactions as vehicles to both exploit existing and explore new social capital. This paper, therefore, sets out to contribute to a better understanding about M&A performance determinants over time. The implications for research and business practice are discussed.