How Culture Impacts the Performance of Mergers and Acquisitions - Research Paper Example

How culture impacts the performance of mergers and acquisitions Name: Number: Course Code: Lecturer: Date: Introduction Over the last twenty years, mergers and acquisitions have increasingly become a routine as a means of global expansion for businesses to looking for international reach. Most of these companies give access to ability and local aptitude base without taking an imitative of forming a subsidiary from the scratch. Regardless of their clear success, nearly half of the integrative business enterprises fail. The causes of these failures have come as a result of insufficient planned strategies behind the whole process, lack of proper planning in pre-acquisition, or how to manage post-acquisition strategies (Alvesson, 2007). Cultural differences have been regarded as the cause of failure for both cross-border and domestic deals. Given the open nature, differences in organizational or national cultures goes unnoticed throughout the mergers and acquisition process which results to newly created companies to take much time before reaching a productive state. Management studies have shown that there has been a lot of cultural rivalry in most of the organizations. This can be clearly seen in the studies that have been undertaken concerning complexities of culture in different organizations. Several researchers have called for proper cultural factors analysis as resources and constraints, as well as latest methods and conceptualization developed to study the cross-culture. Fundamental to this revitalized interest is the intention to have a focus on the comprehensive organizational processes and cultures. This is to say learning and building of identity in which organizations are affected by cultural factors. There has been a lot of ambiguity on various researches that have been undertaken to cultural differences. Scholars have recommended that differences on national and organizational cultures have resulted to reduced post-acquisition performances and have supported their evidence for such effect. However, other scholars have reasoned that difference in culture may act as a way of creating value in both local and foreign acquisition (Ambos, 2009). Therefore, the literature review tries to give some explanations of some of the ambiguous findings by citing the effects that national and organizational differences in culture have on the foreign acquisitions. Even though there exists other key post-acquisition aspects that demand attention, knowledge transfer and social conflict are specifically interesting results since this assist in understanding the two sides of the coin in after acquisition integration: the positive impacts of cultural learning on one hand and the negative impacts on the other hand. According to the social theory, it may be suggested that cultural disparities may invoke the idea of stereotyping and an argument of ‘them versus us. Definition of the topic Culture is a word that has a different meaning depending on the context in which it is used. We use and encounter the word culture on several occasions. Culture is a framework of values, behavioral patterns, experiences and assumptions that are shared by any social group. Different countries have different cultures (Anderson J. C., 2008). Therefore as a company or any business entity tries to merge or acquire ownership of other foreign, cultural differences is inevitable. Cultural difference can be considered as one of the most crucial issues to a merger since it may result to loss of important employees, poor employee performance and a lot of conflicts that may take time during the merging process. Culture clash can be realized at the time of merging the organizations, which may comprise of the disparity in their norms, styles, philosophies, sanctions and objectives. This poses a lot of challenges if at all the two companies decide to combine together. This topic is one of the interesting to learn since every manager who intends to work in a foreign country has to learn the intercultural diversity amongst countries. He/she should also devise ways of managing the culture clash within organizations (Anderson J. C., 2011). The topic is worth studying since there having been a lot of challenges that are encountered in merging and acquisition. People working in different countries have a different reaction on same events or circumstances. This topic therefore provides some insight on how to manage incompatible and dissimilar cultures during the acquisition process. Research problem Mergers and acquisitions are the leading strategic opportunities for those business organizations that are intending to beat their competitors in the market. Organizations globally are spending billions of money in pursuance of this strategy. Nevertheless, rate of success cannot be fully estimated due to incongruence of cultures (Anderson J. C., 2011). The objective of this literature review is to find the reasons why most of the mergers fail. The paper bases on the study of previous literature and therefore comes up with a conceptual framework that maximizes the findings of several authors. This aims at producing practical approaches in dealing with mergers and acquisitions. This literature also seek to explain performance or underperformance of mergers and acquisition in terms of effects that variables like cultural compatibility, cultural distance, change in culture, convergence of culture have on the process of integration and the monetary performance of businesses that engage in mergers and acquisition activities. Literature review The model below helps in discussion of this study. It mainly concentrates on two main mergers and acquisition outcome of the performance i.e. realization of synergy as depicted by accounting related outcome and the creation of shareholder value. The latter proposes some distinct procedures whereby the difference in culture influences the value of both the long term and short term. One: by influencing the expectations of the investors of their future performance and two, by influencing the possibility of real economic benefits that are created a procedure which demands cognition of synergies (Arbuckle, 2008). Therefore, the model clearly states the main function of the process of integration in establishing the success or failure of M & A. Task integration and socio-cultural integration are the two aspects that have been proposed to be the main factors that promote the realization of synergy. However, it is worth knowing that difference in culture is not the only factor that contributes to success or failure of the M & A. Several variables have been put into consideration which affects the performance of the firm operating under M &A. The importance of cultural disparity as the key determinant of the outcome of M & A, is possible to rise since the number of relations and links decreases in the casual chain. In essence, there is a possibility for cultural difference to be linked to socio-cultural integration. In the following sections, an explicit discussion of different variables and their relationships is discussed (Byrne, 2009). The relationships which has already been researched, are presented. Effects of cultural disparity on the performance of M & A and integration process In this section, the issue of socio-cultural integration focuses on related aspects which are applicable to the realization of synergy. This includes having the correct attitude towards any organization and the appearance shared identity within the organization. There exists enough evidence to show that people get attracted to other people whose values and attitudes do resemble what they have. Furthermore, a lot of scholars have found out that norms, values and ideologies shared promote trust and hinder the possibility of conflicts. On the other hand, selfishness on sharing the fundamental issues inculcates conflict within the organization and as a result biases crops in (Cartwright, Mergers and Acquisitions: The Human Factor, 2002). This may also generate suspicion since the some group members are being assessed as malevolent, unethical and uninformed, whereas the others are being seen as discipline and informed. According to social identity theory, it presumes that members of an organization are bias and jealous towards their fellow members and always hold a grudge with them so as to maintain a favor in their own association. There is a likelihood of biases within the group to be greatest as compared biases outside the group. This is because there is a high chance of an internal member to take over the situation than those outside. In such scenarios, cohesiveness within the members increases. On the other hand, the acquiring managers adopt superiority attitude while treating the other members of the group inferior (Cartwright, The role of cultural compatibility in successful organizational mariage, 2003). Furthermore, since the cultural disparity has become attribution targets, power struggles and internal politics are portrayed as being fueled by the difference in culture, even in circumstances where this is not applicable. The following hypothesis is suggested in conjunction with this argument: Hypothesis 1: Cultural differences among merging firms are associated negatively with the outcome of socio-cultural integration Integration of task-Whereas the mergers and acquisition literature emphasize the issues relating to integration procedures due to the difference in culture, M & A scholars have also advanced their research on effects of cultural difference as being viewed as a source of value. This perspective is majorly based on the hypothesis that the differences and not similarities between the merging firms tend to create better opportunities for learning and synergies. According to conclusive research, it has shown that mergers and acquisition provide the company with viable advantage by providing easy access to valuable abilities which are amalgamated in various cultural or organizational environments. Even if these abilities are not assimilated directly into the organization, the combination of practices and new knowledge is likely to raise the level of knowledge development. Conversely, the benefits can be gained if there is a small gap in cultural difference between the merging firms so as to facilitate effective transfer of abilities, sharing of resources and learning. For instance, if the fashion of the executive management is different from the other members, then sharing of fundamental issues is limited thus limiting the firm from achieving its targets (Dorfman, Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. , 2011). This is just because of distance in cultural approach of various management practices. In the real sense, there is no M & A study that has looked upon the likelihood of curvilinear relationship between integration outcomes and cultural differences. Thus, this proposition has been advanced for future testing. Proposition 1 Non-monotonic relationship exists between task integration outcomes and cultural differences so as to positively associate with ability transfer, earning and resource sharing. Synergy realization, socio-cultural integration and task integration- whereas M&A may be inspired by monetary factors, the associated enterprise acquisition is to boost the position of the company producing the synergies whereby the infusion of two or more companies generate more value than it would have done alone. However, some synergies in M&A are cross-selling products, economies of scale and channels of distribution. Persistent with the perspective of value creation on M&A, the main focus is the capability of creating synergies. Proposition 2- Task and socio-cultural integration procedures do interact to ease the achievement of synergies Realization of synergy and cultural difference- from other relevant sources, it is evident that cultural disparity influences the degree to which the synergy is achieved. Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to forecast ex ante if cultural disparity benefits will clear or surpass the obstructions caused by cultural disparity during the process of integration. This is because of the fact that task integration and socio-cultural processes do interact and infuse in a very complex way so as to promote/undermine the achievement of synergies (Dorfman, Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. , 2011). The evidence shows that negative/poor socio-cultural relationship limits the efficiency of task integration potentials. Essentially, negative socio-cultural interaction will inhibit successful integration task. Hypothesis 2. Firms which have sold their experience are likely to cut down their employment rate. Mergers and acquisitions may fuel the organizational change that may lead to upgrading of skills. M&A can be seen as a tool of change that involves knowledge transfer and production implementation methods. In this essence, the demand by the firm for competent workers must increase substantially. Highly competent workers boost the company’s image and bring effective change if given an opportunity to implement (Hofstede, 2005). Furthermore, an M&A may give momentum to workers whose opportunities are scarce and may be laid off. The chance to look for a better match results in improved quality of products among the departmental workers. In a very aggressive labor market, employees’ salary reflects the quality of the match. Hypothesis 3 The difference in culture relates negatively to acquisition returns for getting the company’s shareholders Long-term value- the acquisition returns represent the expectations of the investors of the benefits but does not reflect whether M&A can create the actual benefits and generate long term benefits for the shareholders. Up to date, there are few researches that look into the long term of companies and worst is that only a few have infused the approaches of outcome-oriented versus the study. Therefore, very little has been known about the relationship between shareholder value and synergies (Haspeslagh, 2009). The success or failure of the M&A has been associated with the market condition. When the cultural difference relationship is affected, the firm’s market position is shaken. Obviously, the benefits of synergies will reflect the overall accumulated wealth of the shareholders, if only the investors perceive it to be the surplus of the normal selling price. Hypothesis 3 B Differences in culture relate negatively to post acquisition return on stock Relationship moderators between M&A outcomes and cultural difference The impact of cultural difference may not be clearly understood if it is isolated from the features of the acquire-target correlation and the amalgamation of the whole procedure. It is worth putting into consideration two dimensions of possible moderators: 1. Cultural difference dimension There has been an argument that both national and organizational cultures are two different constructs. The national culture is more adamant to change and has a deeper sense f consciousness as opposed to organizational culture (Larsson R. a., 2011). National difference at the higher levels has a lot of barriers than cultural differences at the organizational level. This is evident in the sense that across-the-border M&A seem to be more complicated to execute due to a strict requirement like the twin-layered acculturation. However, cultural challenges within the local M&A are not severe as those encountered across-the-border M&A. Though other studies have revealed that problems related with social-cultural integration are amplified with the domestic level, it has not shown any evident of severity. The only observation made is that the mangers taking part in the M&A cross- border are keen on the least tangible issues and overlook the crucial cultural issues within the local M&A (Cartwright, The role of cultural compatibility in successful organizational mariage, 2003). Hypothesis 4 Difference in culture is more negatively related to the outcome of socio-cultural integration in close relation than when it is distant There are various caveats to note. The first is that there is no casual relationship between the extent of integration design and relatedness. For instance, the horizontal acquisition may closely be integrated but under control. Secondly, due to inconsistent levels of integration for different business enterprises, it is worth studying the effects of integration design at the business level rather than firm’s level. Thirdly, the study on the performance of M&A and relatedness has brought mixed outcomes. From the view of human resource and culture, it is not apparent whether the relatedness’ benefits will clear the risks and costs associated with M&A (Dorfman, Culture, Leadership, and organization, 2004). In essence, to realize synergies involves a lot of interaction as well as coordination cost. This may increase the risk of implementation due to human resource and cultural problems. Extreme integration level may fuel the employees to resist change, thus inhibiting synergy realization. In fact, it is even worst when there is a wider cultural gap since cultural difference worsens the situation. Effects of culture on mergers and acquisition performance Mergers and acquisition and their cultural performance The idea of organizational culture was first introduced in 1960s but was majorly practiced in 1980s. Organizational culture entails the beliefs, assumptions and values that are shared by the members of an organization. It is regarded today as a vital tool in shaping the commitment of an individual, productivity, satisfaction and longevity in an organization. Even though some research has mentioned the cultural and human consequences of disparity in the culture of organizations, some have featured on the significance of cultural fit. According to a study that was done on some acquisitions in US, it was found that there was a difference in management styles of the top management, but not in evaluation and reward systems, to have a negative impact on the performance. According to several researches that have been done, it has been found that differences in organizational cultures have some impacts on the performance of an organization (Zander, 2006). Nonetheless, results have shown that there is a variance on the impacts from negative to positive. Basing on these findings, it is therefore difficult to conclude on the impacts of organizational culture on the performance of mergers and acquisition. National culture and M&A performance British and American researchers made several studies on mergers and acquisition and took a lot of interest on the subject. It defines the Dos and Don't of life that fills up the mind of the citizens of a country. Unlike other organizational cultures, a country’s culture operates in a deeper way. Usually national borders are used as an alternative for national culture in most of intercultural literature. The framing itself is more of theoretical and not precise, however, with the existence of regional and minority cultures that exist within a country’s national boundary. Among the first works on the effects of national culture on mergers and acquisition, it has been found that the buying behavior of a firm during the acquisition process mostly depended on the national background of a country (Weber, 2009). Even though cultural difference is linked with the poor performance of local mergers and acquisitions, national M&A take advantage over this. Therefore, national culture differences can never be an obstacle but a source of success for the performance of mergers and acquisition. International acquisitions better their performance when distance between the national cultures is increased. This therefore shows that negative cultural differences do not affect the performance of Mergers and acquisitions. The relationship between mergers and acquisition and various cultures Several researches have been done to look at the immediate presence and impacts of various cultures on the foreign mergers and acquisitions (Vaara, 2008). While the elements of national and organizational cultures affect foreign mergers and acquisition, conflicts depend on the required level of integration. When it comes to impacts on performance, several studies have been done on the role of corporate and national culture in determining the effectiveness of local and foreign mergers. In local deals, organizational cultural differences have been found to effect in lowering the commitment and cooperation of top management amongst the partners. In foreign deals, nationwide culture indicated stress, bad attitude and cooperation towards the merger more than that of organizational culture. The researchers concluded that both corporate and national cultures played a major role in the success of mergers and acquisition. Research has also been carried on the creation of acculturative stress in local and foreign European mergers. It has been found that acculturative stress is a delicate phenomenon, which is at times influenced by a nationwide culture not essentially in the intended direction. Acculturation can therefore produce attraction or stress depending on the aspect of acculturative stress and also the native countries of the companies taking part in the acquisition. In some instances of local mergers (Vaara, 2008), acculturative stress was mostly experienced than in foreign acquisitions. National and organizational cultural differences as background of social difference National and organizational cultural differences have some effects in the creation of identity in mergers and acquisitions. Identity-building centers on various social groups which may be activated at the time the organization is undergoing a transition. As in the case of foreign acquisitions, the key categories are national and organizational identities that become significant especially when two organizations are combined-in a process known as double acculturation. The important thing during the process of identity-building is that individuals relate similarity regarding values and beliefs with trustworthiness and attractiveness. This association to the development of out-group and in-group biases that can be improved in condition of ambiguity and uncertainty in regards to the future (Teerikangas, 2007). Therefore, persons in merging institutions do not even understand or trust others in the other side. Since decisions made after the acquisition deals with important issues for the involved parties, there may be a lot of divisions and confrontations among the people who represents the two sides within the organization. If these issues are not properly addressed, the two sides may mistrust each other therefore damaging the relationship and failure of social integration. Therefore, it is argued that major cultural disparities are mostly associated with conflicts among the group members that range from diverse opinions to open arguments and mistrust. Discussion of Research Question Organization and national culture Research question Does cultural difference have any impact in M&A? The compatibility of organizational and national cultures, commonly called ‘cultural fit’ in mergers and acquisition has very important role in determining its success. Several scholars consider cultural fit to be more crucial than the strategic fit (Shadish, 2005). Nevertheless, the issue at stake is whether the national or organizational cultural difference has any impact on the success of M&A. Furthermore, it suggests whether these effects are negative or positive. In some of the past studies, it has been suggested that the issue of ‘cultural fit’ is provided if the values are alike though others give complementary figures to be ‘fitting’ cultures. In the last few years, there has not been a clear explanation for this. Whereas a few authors suggest that cultural difference influence the success of M&A, several other researches show that the organizational culture is more influential on the outcome of the M&A. Interestingly (Shadish, 2005); other sub-cultures like professional cultures are equally important therefore should be put into consideration. Cultural disparity tends to reduce the social integration level. This concurs with the results of the findings which suggest that cultural difference may harbor barriers and challenges for realizing socio-cultural integration. Conversely, no viable evidence has been found on the organizations’ complementarities that affect the realization of synergy. Contrary, same organizations can integrate more easily than the other complementary companies. Other research studies show that the bigger the cultural distance, the better the performance of M&A. After all, cultural diversities are better opportunities for commercial businesses. In conclusion, acknowledgement, awareness and proper cultural difference management can minimize the problems associated with cultural disparity. Through the method of meta-analysis, it has been known integration influence the outcome of M&A. The extent of these effects ranges from -0.74 to 0.23 (Pfeffer, 2011). After extensive analysis, from various moderators, the findings depict that effects of culture have a lot of impact on the firm’s performance because of diverse moderators. Cultural disparity influences the performance and integration depending on the prevailing conditions. Cultural Disparity in Global Acquisitions An analysis of past study The amalgamation of cultural disparities and acquisition performance has provoked the scholars of management since time in memorial when study and analysis of culture was common. Several existing research has concentrated on cultural distance between the acquired and the acquiring organizations. A lot of these researches have put into consideration the cultural disparity to be the cause of deprived acquisition performance and have confirmed to be true. In global set up, some researchers claim that acquirement from close-culture nations may lead to good results as opposed to those which have no links at all (Hofstede, 2005). Furthermore, cultural disparity may act as a source of value creation and ability development. Conversely, cultural distance within the organization has been put into doubt by global businesses whilst other alternatives given. Some have concentrated on the process of acculturation (Vermeulen, Learning through acquisitions, 2010). The main initiative is to analyze the similarity between the acquired firms and the appropriate acculturation modes and how they influence the period of integration. Amusingly, it has been found that the outcome after the merger performance was commendable especially in situations where the before-merger cultural incongruity changed to after-merger cultural congruity. In the view of knowledge transfer and social conflict, the issue is not to look at the ‘real’ cultural disparity but somewhat to concentrate on subjective personal interpretations and probably how they are related to identity-building. Latest researches have shown how after-acquisition integration engages national cultural labels which may yield conflict. Whereas this research has broadened the knowledge and understanding on the cultural role in after-acquisition integration, what only remains is the considerable uncertainty relating to their impacts on the aftermath outcomes. For instance, an advanced meta-analysis research authenticated that cultural disparities did affect the socio-cultural integration, value of shareholder and the realization of synergies in various ways. Nevertheless, it was concluded that there is to research on ‘how’ the cultural disparities influence integration (Shadish, 2005). In their conclusion, they agreed the nature of the environment has a significant effect on the cultural difference. Some of the sources that fuel the disparities are methodological concerns, change of the integration procedures and the perception of cultural disparity. Different levels of cultural makeup and the combined efforts of the company managers ought to be given greater attention. Accordingly, contradictory and distinctive effects should be specified. Making a directional step, there is need therefore to investigate, if any, impact of cultural difference in M&A, knowledge transfer and social conflict within the related global acquisitions. Gaps of the existing literature review The analysis in the complexity of culture in organizations indicated that the studies never regarded the issue of several analysis levels, interaction between different levels of culture and cultural diversity (Malekzadeh, 2011). According to the synthesis, it looks like the field of research still require a deeper understanding on the challenges that relates to culture and M&A before coming up with up with clear results on the relationship between culture and performance. It is evident that the current research field has never reached the desired level of advancement that allows the maximum use of survey-based research. There is still need to use in-depth approach in studying cultural issues on acquisitions and mergers, with the interest of acknowledging the mergers and acquisitions. Also, this can be utilized later for expansion of knowledge (Sackmann, 2004). Conclusion While cultural differences affect the process of mergers and acquisition, the recommended relationship between culture difference and the performance of an acquisition tend to make many readers into believing that differences in culture provides sufficient explanations of performance of mergers and acquisitions (Larsson R. a., 2011). The literature indicated that with several factors that affect the performance of mergers and acquisitions, it more thoughtful to look at this difficulty in itself. Probably the field of research is still undergoing some growth therefore accurate measurements on the effects of culture on performance of mergers and acquisitions may not be conclusive. However, it can be concluded that the performance of mergers and acquisitions should be looked in a bigger perspective since not only cultural factors affect the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Since culture plays a major role in mergers and acquisition process, greater novel research can be a means to the end. Therefore the literature review tries to give some explanations of some of the ambiguous findings by citing the effects that national and organizational differences in culture have on the foreign acquisitions. Even though there are exists other key post-acquisition aspects that demand attention, knowledge transfer and social conflict are specifically interesting results since this assist in understanding the two sides of the coin in after acquisition integration: the positive impacts of cultural learning on one hand and the negative impacts on the other hand (Vaara, 2008). References Alvesson, M. (2007). Understanding Organizational Culture. London: Sage. Ambos, B. a. 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