Should I stay or should I go? understanding employees’ decisions to leave after mergers in Hong Kong’s banking industry

Victor Ming Tak Ng (), Emily Guohua Huang () and Michael N. Young ()
Additional contact information
Victor Ming Tak Ng: Hong Kong Baptist University
Emily Guohua Huang: Hong Kong Baptist University
Michael N. Young: Appalachian State University

Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 2019, vol. 36, issue 4, No 6, 1023-1051

Abstract: Abstract Recently, Chinese firms are increasingly acquiring firms overseas. This is often followed by high levels of employee exit from the acquired firm, which can be problematic. To better understand this phenomenon, we use the unfolding model of voluntary turnover to examine why and how individual employees of Hong Kong-based banks make the decision to either stay or go after their bank is taken over by a Chinese bank. We obtain data from three major acquisitions of banks in Hong Kong by Chinese state-owned banks from 2004 to 2008. Our sample consists of 406 employees from the acquired banks as well as non-acquired banks. We find that employees that have left after being acquired are more likely to report experiencing a “shock” than are employees of non-merged banks and that this influences their decision to leave. We also find that in the merger context, male employees, front-line employees and officer-level employees have different leaving decision paths from their female, back-office, and non-officer-level counterparts respectively. No such differences are found in the non-merger context. In addition, we find that a retention bonus delays departure after the merger. These findings contribute to research and practice of managing employee turnover after cross-border acquisitions by Chinese firms.

Keywords: Chinese cross-border merger and acquisition; Employee voluntary turnover; Merger and acquisition; Unfolding model of employee turnover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10490-018-9610-z 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:kap:asiapa:v:36:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10490-018-9610-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/10490/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10490-018-9610-z

Access Statistics for this article

Asia Pacific Journal of Management is currently edited by Jane Lu

More articles in Asia Pacific Journal of Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().