Title: Culture-performance relationships in mergers and acquisition: the role of trust

Authors: Yaakov Weber; Israel Drori; Shlomo Y. Tarba

Addresses: School of Business Administration, College of Management – Academic Studies, Rabin Blvd. 7, Rishon Lezion, Israel ' School of Business Administration, College of Management – Academic Studies, Rabin Blvd. 7, Rishon Lezion, Israel ' Department of Economics and Management, The Open University, Raanana, Israel

Abstract: This paper presents a theoretical framework for investigating mergers and acquisitions (M&As) performance through an interdisciplinary, multi-stage, and multi-level approach. Trust and human resource challenges during the integration process following a merger are explored to help explain the inconsistencies among empirical findings about the effects of cultural differences on M&A performance. It is proposed that in addition to culture clash, trust has a direct effect on acquired firm's management attitudes and behaviours, thereby influencing post-merger success. We also elaborate on how trust acts to moderate the effects of culture clash in M&As, thus elucidating contradictory findings in the literature.

Keywords: mergers; acquisitions; trust; post-merger integration; culture-performance relationships; interdisciplinary approaches; multi-stage approaches; multi-level approaches; human resource management; HRM; cultural differences; culture clashes; acquired firms; management attitudes; management behaviour; post-merger success; cross-cultural competence; cross-cultural management; cross-cultural transformations; conflict.

DOI: 10.1504/EJCCM.2012.052603

European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management, 2012 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.252 - 274

Accepted: 29 Oct 2012
Published online: 29 Jul 2014 *

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