With the gradual expansion of China's economy, the demand for innovation and growth of China’s companies is increasing. Traditional internal research and development (R&D) and iterative product and service development are no longer sufficient to meet the fierce market competition. More and more companies are seeking breakthrough growth of overall technology, brand, and service. Therefore, mergers & acquisitions (M&A) have become a common business activity for China’s companies. The motivation of company’s M&A is complex, and as M&A laws in China and worldwide become more complicated, how to make rational and rapid M&A that can achieve strategic upgrading of enterprises has become a research issue of concern for Chinese economic, financial, accounting, and legal disciplines, etc. As a basic industry, Chinese pharmaceutical industry has not yet taken a dominant position in the world. Due to the intertwining of multiple disciplines and complex background information, the impact of M&A transaction size on the innovation performance of pharmaceutical companies has yet to be studied.Focusing on the two hot spots: M&A and innovation, in the context of China's economic transformation and upgrading, this dissertation explores the impact of M&A on innovation based on the current situation analysis and theoretical analysis, and deeply studies and reveals the mechanism and effect of M&A transaction size on company innovation. 281 M&A data of 58 listed companies in China's healthcare industry from 2008 to 2017 was collected and regression analysis was performed to examine the impact of M&A transaction size on the innovation level of companies in terms of two aspects: the number of patent applications and the number of patents granted, and on three levels: invention patents, utility model patents and design patents. The results of the research show that: M&A transaction size promotes the growth of the number of patent applications and patents granted and has a significant positive effect on enterprise innovation; and M&A transaction size has contributed to the increase of the number of utility model patent applications and patents granted. In general, the innovation performance of M&A transaction size in utility model patents is better than that in invention patents with higher technological elements. Further mechanism examination results show that the innovation performance of a company after a bigger M&A transaction is influenced by its absorptive capacity: the stronger its absorptive capacity, the more opportunities it has to absorb and transform the technologies and knowledge of an acquired enterprise into its own. Through learning and imitation, it realizes the transformation and innovation of the technologies obtained through M&A, ultimately enhancing its innovation capability. / Business Administration/Finance

The term mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a collective name for a certain type of financial transaction, in which two organizations become a single entity (Rosenthal 2002, Seo & Hill 2005, Silhan 1994). In the post-M&A transaction process, the phase of integrating the organizations together emerges. These strategies can either be to absorb the acquiring organizations into the acquirer's entity or let the acquiring organizations stay fully preserved as stand-alone organizations. Another integration strategy includes transforming both organizations, where both parties adapt to each other (Marks & Mirvis 2010).  Despite the vast number of resources poured into the field, M&A transactions still have a high faliure rate (Homburg & Bucerius 2006, Marks 2001, Saunders et al. 2009). A failed M&A transaction does not only result in the loss of financial capital for the involved organizations but could also lead to people losing their jobs and potential environmental consequences. Because of this organizations become less efficient and therefore must spread their resources on activities that do not yield a positive result (Marks & Mirvis 2010, Schweiger & Goulet 2005). With Boateng & Lodorfos (2006) uncovering how “culture plays a key role in theintegration process and consequently the overall success of M\&As" and Hofstede (2001)claims that organizational culture are possible to manipulate. With these key statements,the purpose of this study is to investigate organizational culture and its role in theintegration process. The following research questions were created: 1.How do managers from different organizational cultures perceive the same integrationstrategy into a knowledge-centered organization? 2.How can an acquiring organization work with different organizational cultures during anintegration? In the thesis, we studied multiple organizations, the "umbrella organization" whichspecializes in conducting M&A transactions as a strategy for growth, and some of the organizations they have acquired and are undergoing integration into the umbrella organization. The thesis was conducted with a mixed method with a survey inspiredmostly by Schweiger & Goulet (2005) and Hofstede (2001) combined with semi-structured interviews to enable us to examine certain integration factors and cultural dimensions thatwe used in order to find correlations between them. In combination with this, we investigated how all the organizations perceived the integration to transpire based on theintegration framework by Marks & Mirvis (2010) and if organizational culture played a rolein how an organization should customize these strategies. Our findings suggest that having employees within certain cultures can affect the perception of how one sees the integration strategy, indicating that the umbrella organization and the acquired organizations are not aligned in their perception of the integration strategies. In order to enhance the effectiveness and potential success of integration we propose that it could be beneficial to customize the integration approach and strategy depending on each individual M&A transaction. Limitations of this study can be connected to the quantitative method since the results are restricted to a small sample size from one case organization as well as only investigating the correlation and not the causality between variables. / Termen mergers and acquisitions (M&A) är ett samlingsnamn för en viss typ av finansiell transaktion, där två organisationer går ihop och blir en enda enhet (Rosenthal 2002, Seo & Hill 2005, Silhan 1994). I processen efter M&A transaktioner uppstår fasen med att integrera organisationerna tillsammans. Dessa strategier kan antingen vara att absorbera de förvärvande organisationerna i förvärvarensenhet eller låta de förvärvande organisationerna förbli helt bevarade som fristående organisationer. En annan integrationsstrategi inkluderar att transformera båda organisationerna, där båda parter anpassar sig till varandra (Marks & Mirvis 2010). Trots den stora mängd resurser som läggs på att studera M&A transaktioner har de fortfarande en hög misslyckande grad (Homburg & Bucerius 2006, Marks 2001, Saunders et al.2009). En misslyckad M&A transaktion leder inte bara till förlust av finansiellt kapital för de inblandade organisationerna utan kan också leda till att människor förlorar sina jobb och potentiella konsekvenser för hållbarhet. På grund av detta blir organisationer mindre effektiva och måste därför sprida sina resurser på aktiviteter som inte ger ett positivt resultat (Marks & Mirvis 2010, Schweiger & Goulet 2005). Boateng & Lodorfos (2006) avslöjade hur "kultur spelar en nyckelroll i integrationsprocessen och följaktligen den övergripande framgången för M&As" och Hofstede (2001) hävdar att organisationskulturen är möjlig att manipulera. Med dessa nyckelpåståenden är syftet med denna studie att undersöka organisationskultur och dess roll i integrationsprocessen. Följande forskningsfrågor skapades: 1.Hur uppfattar chefer från olika organisationskulturer samma integrationsstrategi in i en kunskapscentrerad organisation? 2.Hur kan en förvärvande organisation arbeta med olika organisationskulturer under en integration? I avhandlingen studerade vi flera organisationer. Den förvärvande organisationen, "paraplyorganisationen", är specialiserad på att genomföra M&A transaktioner som en strategi för tillväxt. Examensarbetet har genomförts med en blandad metod genom en undersökning inspirerad till mestadels av Schweiger & Goulet (2005) och Hofstede (2001) kombinerat med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Detta för att vi ska kunna undersöka vissa integrationsfaktorer och kulturella dimensioner som vi använt för att hitta samband mellan dem. I kombination med detta undersökte vi hur alla organisationer uppfattade att integrationen skett baserat på integrationsramverket av Marks & Mirvis (2010) och om organisationskulturen spelade en roll i detta, samt hur paraplyorganisationen skulle kunna anpassa dessa strategier beroende på organisationernas olika kulturer. Våra resultat tyder på att olika kulturer uppfattar integrationen på olika sätt trots att den ska vara densamma. Detta indikerar att paraplyorganisationen och de förvärvade organisationerna inte är samordnade i sin uppfattning om integrationsstrategierna. För att förbättra integrationens effektivitet och potentiella framgång föreslår vi att det kan vara fördelaktigt att anpassa integrationsstrategin beroende på varje enskild M&A-transaktion. Begränsningar av denna studie kan kopplas till den kvantitativa metoden eftersom resultaten är begränsade till en liten urvalsstorlek från en fallorganisation samt endast undersöker korrelationen och inte kausaliteten mellan variabler.