The impact of horizontal mergers and acquisitions on supply chain management : the case of the industrial maintenance, repair and overhaul distribution sector

A great majority of commercial businesses plan to or, at least, desire to grow and expand their operations, enter new markets, obtain new technologies, and find new customers. These goals can be achieved in an organic way through slow expansion, steady project investment, gradual growth of sales, investment in R&D (research and development), etc. Another way, one that is much quicker and that can offer instantaneous growth, is through mergers with or acquisitions of (M&As) other businesses. If all goes well, M&A deals can reward numerous stakeholders, including institutional and individual shareholders, suppliers, customers as well as employees. Mergers and acquisitions can drive company growth enormously, multiplying turnover just in a matter of years. The rewards are very promising. On the flip side, however, many M&A initiatives either fail or do not deliver initially set objectives, as will be discussed later in the study. In the last two decades, numerous authors have researched the M&A area, often in an attempt to understand barriers to and enablers of successful merger and acquisition deal completion and realisation. These authors have looked into various aspects of the M&A process, including human resource management and customer management, sales channels integration, and have diligently scrutinised the financial and strategic characteristics of M&A deals. Surprisingly, despite the abundance of research and knowledge, the M&A completion success rate has not been improving by any significant measure, yet this has not discouraged organisations from pursuing these, as is now known, high risk growth strategies. In this research the author is looking at supply chains of businesses concerned with the subject of mergers and acquisitions. Organisations may either be conducting an acquisition, or becoming acquired by somebody else, or may be merging with another business. Thorough consideration is given to the pre-acquisition or pre-merger stage of the process, as well as to post-acquisition or post-merger supply chain practices and integration. The author believes that skilful supply chain management, including the integration of merging supply chains, can help to improve the chances of successful M&A deal completion through the enabling of full potential realisation within the shortest possible time. What is more, to date, very limited research has been carried out on the subject, and so there is a direct need for the study