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We review our work as collaborators over nearly 40 years as researchers and OD practitioners on the human, cultural, and organizational aspects of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). This chapter addresses (1) how our thinking, research methods, and practices developed over time, (2) accounts of deriving theory from practice and contrariwise of applying theory to practical matters, (3) how our respective shifts from academe toward scholarly-practice influenced our thinking and how we write, and (4) varieties of scholarly collaboration – ranging from intensive interchange to sequential pitch and catch. Early work covers a study of a “white-knight” acquisition and then advising on post-merger integration in a hostile takeover, revealing the stages of a deal, dynamics of buyers and sellers, and human factors that produce the “merger syndrome.”

Throughout we talk about confronting challenges of the scholar-practitioner divide as it pertains to role definition and boundary management as well to our theorizing, writing, and publication agenda. The chapter concludes with reflections on doing applied research in collaboration with a colleague (and friend).

Libraries have faced many periods of grim economic realities. These periods of hardship have forced libraries to strive for more efficient organizational structures. Many of these improved organizational structures have been the result of mergers and/or consolidations. This phenomenological study describes the lived experiences of the merger design team of a large and complex library organization.

Results indicated the experience of the participants touched upon each of Bolman and Deal’s (2008) four frames: political, human resources, structural, and symbolic. The merger design team’s effectiveness on task is congruent with the model of team effectiveness proposed by Hackman (2002). Lastly, the role of underlying assumptions, espoused values and beliefs, and artifacts that makes up the organization’s culture falls within the parameters set forth by Schein (2004).

Scholars have been conducting serious research on the human, organizational, and cultural aspects of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for 30 years. Yet, over this period, there have only been modest improvements in the M&A success rate. In this chapter, the author examines corporate combinations, describes how human factors contribute to their failure or success, and identifies key research questions whose answers can help to improve the M&A success rate in both financial and human terms. The author proposes research questions for the key phases of a deal, including buying a company and putting companies together. And, reflecting an emerging trend among some frequent acquirers to build an internal competence in M&A execution, the author also proposes research questions for how to accelerate the process of learning from past combinations to better manage future ones.

Strategic decisions leaders make involving organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), divestitures, and downsizing, which can influence and/or interact with other organizational factors. For example, within the context of M&A, changes impact financial performance, firm behaviors, and organizational culture. In addition, strategic decisions for these types of change can also interrelate with other more intrapersonal factors, including both leaders’ and employees’ health and well-being. Employee stress, also referred to as “merger syndrome,” outlines individual negative impacts of the changes including, but not limited to, cynicism and distrust, change wariness, and burnout, all accumulating to psychological effects including increases in detachment to work, stress, and sick leave. In this chapter, the authors outline the different impacts M&A phases have on stress and well-being and how they interrelate with the strategic decisions leaders make. The authors also outline future research opportunities and practical implications for how leaders and employees could better manage future major changes such as M&A activities.

This empirical investigation studies the correlates and predictors of employees’ psychological outcomes during mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the context of India. This study examined the role of different types of training initiatives (awareness training, human capital development training, and cross-cultural training) on building employees feeling of psychological empowerment and thriving. Further, second-order attitudes were studied in the form of employee satisfaction and commitment. A cross-sectional research design was adopted where quantitative and qualitative data were collected to investigate the interplay between the variables. Data were collected on an adapted standardized questionnaire from the employees of a public sector organization (N = 117) which had merged with a software company to deliver its IT services. Descriptive analysis, multiple correlational analysis, and stepwise regression analysis have assisted in exploring the different relationships amongst the variables. This study produces a prescriptive framework for merger success based on the model of growth and thriving (Spreitzer & Porath, 2012). Broadly, the results point towards the facilitative role of training in developing feelings of psychological empowerment, thriving, commitment and satisfaction with the merger, however qualitative data identified significant cultural undercurrents.

Due diligence refers to a comprehensive process of investigating and evaluating business opportunities in mergers and acquisitions. While early-stage due diligence usually encompasses financial and strategic assessment, one of the most important things in due diligence is looking at organizational culture at an early stage. This chapter takes stock of the existing research and practice in the area of cultural due diligence and evaluates the strengths and limitations. Based on the review of literature, we developed a framework for cultural due diligence to address the limitations of existing approaches. The framework illustrates a process to screen the M&A targets, gain insight into the target firm’s culture, and identify integration challenges. The process starts with more unobtrusive, indirect, and informal assessments of the target firm’s culture and moves onto more obtrusive, direct, and formal assessments.

We call the attention of management scholars to the methodological traps inherent to data collected using self-reported emotional experience in the context of integration after mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In a systematic review, we identified 15 peer-reviewed empirical articles where authors discuss the impact of emotions in post-merger situations based on interview data. We found that the authors of 12 studies appear to have been unaware of the problems of the interview method or implicitly accepted the inherent and unavoidable distortions and biases of self-reported emotions over time. We argue that these distortions and biases represent threats to data validity and reliability. In support of this position, we cite literature suggesting it is difficult for researchers to reconstruct emotions experienced based on interviews conducted a few weeks after the events, so results based on this method may not be valid. The authors of these articles all relied on data collected several months or years after M&A integration events. Then, they sought to assess the impact of emotions at the time of the integration process. As a consequence, conclusions based on these data may be unreliable. We conclude with recommendations for overcoming this potential source of invalid data in post-merger integration (PMI) studies.

This chapter presents a review of the state-of-the-art in the employee perspective on mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The authors’ aim is to enhance the understanding of the role of employees in M&As. This chapter contributes by presenting a synthesis of how the employee perspective has been studied by describing the methods, the context (industry and geographic location), and publication outlets. Furthermore, this chapter contributes by synthesizing the employee perspective literature into five distinct research streams: (1) employee reactions; (2) culture; (3) communication; (4) knowledge; and (5) speed. The authors reflect on the main findings of each stream and conclude by proposing future directions for research on the role of employees in M&As to (re)generate interest in the topic.

A vast amount of research has been carried out to help us understand the main factors influencing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) performance. Although the existing body of knowledge focuses mainly on macro-level factors, there is an increasing interest from scholars and practitioners in understanding the micro-foundational factors occurring at individual and team levels. This chapter focuses on the importance of emotions – a central facet in individual reactions to workplace events – in M&A processes. To this end, the authors carried out a multi-phased search for articles on micro-foundations in M&A settings published by Business and Management (B/M) and Organizational Behavior and Psychology (O/P) journals. The authors reviewed 41 papers and used the circumplex model to identify and categorize 19 themes related to individual emotions involved in M&A processes in terms of positive/negative valence and high/low activation. The findings show that scholars mainly assume a risk mitigation perspective and focus on themes related to change resistance (negative emotions with high activation) by providing prescriptions on how negative emotions could be mitigated to avoid eroding acquisition performance. Hence, the authors suggest that (a) there should be more efforts to integrate different streams of literature, namely between the strategic and operational/behavioral areas of knowledge and (b) future research should focus on understanding how positive emotions like change proactivity (positive emotions with high activation) might be essential to enhance acquisition performance.