Does National Context Affect Target Firm Employees’ Trust in Acquisitions?

Günter K. Stahl (), Chei Hwee Chua and Amy L. Pablo
Additional contact information
Günter K. Stahl: Vienna University of Economics and Business
Chei Hwee Chua: University of Miami
Amy L. Pablo: University of Calgary

Management International Review, 2012, vol. 52, issue 3, No 4, 395-423

Abstract: Abstract In this study, we test the assumption that the way target firm employees respond to a takeover is contingent on their national origin. The antecedents of target firm member trust in the acquiring firm management were examined in a cross-national sample of German and Singaporean employees using a policy-capturing design. Five factors hypothesized to affect target firm member trust after a takeover were found to be significant influences on employees’ trust judgments in a decision-making simulation: (i) combining firms’ collaboration history, (ii) mode of takeover, (iii) whether it was a domestic or cross-border acquisition, (iv) degree of autonomy removal, and (v) attractiveness of the acquiring firm’s human resource policies and reward system. Further analyses suggest that the relative importance of these factors in predicting target firm employees’ reactions to a takeover varies depending on their national origin. We conclude that companies engaged in cross-border acquisitions need to consider contingencies in the cultural and institutional contexts in which the acquired firms are embedded and adapt their approaches for integrating them accordingly.

Keywords: Cross-border mergers and acquisitions; Post-acquisition integration; Trust; Policy-capturing; Hierarchical linear modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11575-011-0099-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:manint:v:52:y:2012:i:3:d:10.1007_s11575-011-0099-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11575

DOI: 10.1007/s11575-011-0099-7

Access Statistics for this article

Management International Review is currently edited by Michael-Jörg Oesterle and Joachim Wolf

More articles in Management International Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().