Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions : Employee Engagement in Post-merger Integration

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has been a popular strategy to strengthen business competitive-ness since the nineteenth century. Moreover, this trending phenomenon has led M&A to become a popular research topic in the past decades. However, research has typically been dominated by the financial aspects of M&A cases, nor did the M&A success rate improve with the support of robust research findings. In a globalized business world, a growing number of M&A cases are happening in a cross-border setting, but little is known about the role of the human side in its success. Therefore, the thesis focused on the human side of cross-border M&A during post-merger integration (PMI). This thesis aims to provide a better understanding of how employee engagement enhances cross-border post-merger integration and thus improves M&A success rate. With the help of the existing theory of JD-R model, this thesis proposed an adapted model, assuming that there are a few job resources and job demands affecting employee engagement during a cross-border PMI. Through qualitative research and a method of conducting semi-structured interviews with six participants who have experienced cross-border PMI, this social phenomenon was investigated at depth in a natural setting. The research findings show that there are a few elements affecting employee engagement dur-ing a cross-border PMI. However, these elements should not simply be defined as resources or demands due to the duality of them. Therefore, the concluded adapted JD-R model demon-strates that, career growth and training opportunities, salary and compensation level, business efficiency, new organizational culture, team culture and personal factors can affect employee engagement during a cross-border PMI positively or negatively according to the employee’s situ-ation and their way of perceiving changes. This thesis gives insight into human issues in complex organizational changes. The research find-ings strongly point towards facilitating the changes from a human resource perspective behind cross-border M&A success.