Product innovation, a crucial source of competitive advantage, is a company’s lifeblood to thrive in global, dynamic markets. M&A enable firms to access new markets faster and acquire complementary technologies, knowledge, and resources to facilitate product innovation. Despite global disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain shortages, and M&A failure rates of 70% to 90%, firms continue to invest in M&A. Scholars seek to shed light on the conditions that create and destroy value in M&A, specifically the post-acquisition integration phase. While the effects of acquisitions on customers are an underexplored field today, customer relationships are engines for insights into changing expectations that drive product innovation. Today’s economy enables customers to switch to the competition faster than ever, and on top of that, firms see changes in customer networks after acquisitions. Research discusses the antecedents and outcomes of customer orientation but overlooks the role of customers in M&A. The post-M&A integration stage is the M&A phase where the ultimate value is destroyed or created. This study focuses on customer orientation and organizational complexity and their moderating effect on the post-M&A integration and product innovation performance relationship, concentrating on 188 innovation-centered majority acquisitions. It addresses the research question: How and to what extent do (1) customer orientation and (2) organizational complexity impact the relationship between post-M&A integration and product innovation performance? With that, this research uniquely connects the well-defined constructs of product innovation performance, post-M&A integration, customer orientation, and organizational complexity, and uses a mixed-method approach to investigate the research questions and conceptual model.Quantitative study one provides evidence that post-M&A integration had a significant positive effect on product innovation performance, especially for firms with high customer orientation, which positively moderated the main effect. Organizational complexity negatively moderated the post-M&A integration-product innovation performance relationship. When organizational complexity was relatively high with mean customer orientation, the effect of post-M&A integration on product innovation performance flipped from positive to negative. Under the conditions of relatively high customer orientation with mean organizational complexity, the effect of post-M&A integration on product innovation performance flipped from negative to positive. The results indicate that post-M&A integration was positively related to product innovation performance only for organizations with low organizational complexity. To a certain extent, customer orientation helped alleviate this negative impact of organizational complexity. Overall, study one has shown that a balanced approach of customer orientation and organizational complexity would be recommended. Study one also suggests combining the, in the literature separately considered, efficiency (synergy) and stakeholder theories.
The inductive, qualitative study two, conducted with 25 semi-structured interviews, provides insights into how complexity resulting from acquisitions and the relationship with customers should be effectively managed during acquisition integrations to enable product innovation. The findings suggest that acquisitions are inflection points for customers, and customer trust is a crucial influencer of customer decisions. The themes drawn from this study reveal several areas acquirers can proactively manage to impact customer trust: the acquirer’s brand, and reputation, early customer involvement, communication, familiarity with and proximity to the customer, and the responsiveness and reliability to customer inquiries. The confidence in the business partner, that their interactions are based on integrity and reliability is critical and affects the customer-acquirer relationship; even more so when the acquirer is not known to the customer of the acquired firm. While customers should have a seat at the table, the timing of their involvement is critical. Leading innovation-driven acquisition integrations with a customer-centric mindset entails change initiatives that target employees, customers, and partners of the involved firms. The effective interplay of people, agile business processes, and connected, compatible technology between organizations is the foundation for achieving the anticipated value and synergies from integrating the acquired firm into the acquirer’s business. All of that cannot be done without evaluating the impact on the external business environment. Unfavorable decisions taken earlier in the acquisition cycle contribute to challenges later, requiring mitigation plans to be able to achieve the anticipated acquisition goals. The developed management framework guides practitioners to drive product innovation with a well-orchestrated post-acquisition integration process that balances customer orientation and organizational complexity. / Business Administration/Strategic Management
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/10292 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Wagner, Heike |
| Contributors | Di Benedetto, C. Anthony, Chitturi, Pallavi, Wray, Matt, 1964-, Guillotin, Bertrand |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 263 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/10254, Theses and Dissertations |
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