Master's Thesis from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics -
General, grade: 71 % - A, University of Newcastle, language: English,
abstract: There is a high failure rate in cross-border M&A. Many of them
fail due to cultural differences of the combining organisations. This
study examines the role of culture in cross-border M&A regarding
national and organisational culture among other factors that are
important for a successful integration strategy in M&A across borders.
The factors discussed are based on empirical findings, and on literature
that in the analysis, proved to corroborate the findings of the primary
data, or insights based on these findings. Since many authors comply
with DaimlerChrysler having failed because of two heterogeneously
organisational cultures and different management styles trying to
combine into a new culture, this topic was of special interest of the
researcher. DaimlerChrysler is being used as a case study approach in
this research to find out how important the role of culture in
cross-border M&A is. Furthermore, it has been observed, that the
controversial evidence in the literature if many cross-border M&A fail
due to cultural differences is of interest concerning the research
objectives and the literature revealed that in this area little research
is done so far. Therefore, one objective of this research is to fill the
gap in the literature regarding national and organisational culture when
integrating one firm with another or by forming an entirely new one in
cross-border M&A The analysis of primary data in form of semi-structured
interviews has uncovered that the cause of the cultural differences is
not always apparent and ignored particularly in business. However,
cultural differences are not the only cause for cross-border M&A failure
as there are other important factors to take into account.
