The impact of cultural differences on the performance of post-acquisition integration in cross-border M&A: The roles of classification of culture and firms’ internal capabilities

This paper pursues the idea that the relationship between cultural differences and post-acquisition integration may be not as uniform as many studies suggest. By examining two cases of Chinese enterprises in cross-border M&A, this study is marked out from existing studies in the following three respects. First, it breaks down the process of M&A and focus on the post-acquisition rather than the pre-screening. Also, it strongly argues how cultural differences are actually experienced in real life in M&A rather than the previous studies examining the “fit’’ degree of cultural differences or strategies for post-acquisition integration. Second, it examines the extent to which the relationship between cultural differences and post-acquisition integration varies with the classification of cultural differences at both national and organizational perspective. Finally, this research allows the results to vary between acquiring firm with strong and weak corporate internal capabilities. Additionally, this paper is also expected to fill a significant research gap in that it investigates cross-sectional but focuses on the context in Chinese M&A transaction in a qualitative manner, whereas previous studies were typically single and examined only within Western countries. This study suggests that cultural differences and post-acquisitions integration was a negative correlation, that is, the higher the cultural differences are, no matter what type the culture is, the more difficult to achieve synergies. However, if corporate’s internal capability is strong, it could compensate for the negative impact. My findings also suggest that organizations from two sides in M&A should pay attention to the inspection and assessment of their cultural compatibility. Besides, government should develop policies to improve organization's’ internal integrating capabilities through accumulating experiences and developing international business talents, and therefore to decrease failure rate in M&A