Recasting the dynamics of post-acquisition integration: An embeddedness perspective

M&A scholars have generally assumed that post-acquisition integration is a self-contained process. However this ignores that this process rarely unfolds as the only ongoing initiative in an organization. We contend that post-acquisition integration is not detached from other simultaneous change processes in the organizational context and this has important implications for our understanding of how integration dynamics actually evolve. To further understand this embeddedness we examine the unfolding of a post-acquisition integration process in a company faced with an unanticipated drop in demand due to the global economic crisis. Through a qualitative, longitudinal study conducted over three years, we carried out 151 interviews to uncover the unfolding of the post-acquisition process. We find that post-acquisition integration is embedded in a set of co-evolving processes. We highlight four mechanisms (coordination, cohesion, disconnection, alienation) that arise from the co-evolution of processes that either facilitate or impede integration. Our findings contribute to our understanding of post-acquisition integration dynamics by recasting the integration process as embedded in a set of co-evolving processes that shape its unfolding.     

Conformist and Deviant Behaviour in High School: the Merton Typology adapted to an Educational Context*

A l'aide de donnees recoltees aupres de 3 465 etudiants de lOe annee pour une autre etude, on examine la valeur heuristique de la typologie mertonienne de la conduite dans un contexte scolaire. La valeur qu'accordent les etudiants a l'instruction en tant qu'objectif defini par la culture fut identified et comparee a leurs attentes vis-a-vis l'acces aux etudes collegiales comme etant le moyen institutionnel approprie pour realiser cet objectif. Les etudiants furent classes en quatre groupes: les conformistes sont ceux qui accordent une grande importance a l'instruction, et dont le niveau des aspirations est eleve; les innovateurs tout en valorisant l'instruction exhibent un bas niveau d'aspirations; les ritualistes valorisent peu l'instruction mais nour-rissent de fortes ambitions; les retraitistes entretiennent peu d'attentes et ont peu d'attrait pour les etudes. Un certain nombre d'hypotheses decoulant du modele de Merton furent verifiees par les donnees utilisees. On espere ainsi inviter d'autres etudes qui pourront examiner la validite de ce modele dans le domaine scolaire. Data collected from 3465 grade ten students in connection with another study were used to examine the heuristic value of Merton's typology of behaviour in an educational context. The value students have for education as a “culturally definied goal,” was identified and compared to their expectations concerning the use of college attendance as the “institutionally appropriate means” of achieving the goal. Four classifications of students were developed: conformists are those with high value for education and high educational expectations; innovators have high values, but low expectations; ritualists have low values, but high expectations; and retreatists are those with low values and low expectations.     

Table of Contents Volume 7 2003

Volume Contents

Table of Contents Volume 7 2003     

University Service Work in STEM Departments: Gender,Perceived Injustice,and Consequences for Faculty

Using expectancy theory as a framework, we use focus group and climate survey (N = 114) data from a midsize university to explore the gendered nature of university service work among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty. Focus group data highlighted the divergent perceptions of STEM faculty women and department chairs about the importance of service work and its outcomes. Climate survey data indicated that STEM women faculty were more likely than men to perceive injustice in service loads, and perceived injustice was associated with reduced job satisfaction, and increased scholarly isolation, interpersonal workplace conflict, and job stress, regardless of gender.     

Alcohol Use Among Concerned Partners of Heavy Drinking Service Members and Veterans

Heavy drinking in relationships is complex and we focus on an understudied sample of concerned partners (CPs) worried about their U.S. service member/veteran partner's drinking. We evaluated the link between CP drinking and their own mental health, and how CP drinking moderated the efficacy of a web‐based intervention designed to address CPs' mental health and communication. CPs (N = 234) were randomly assigned to intervention or control and completed assessments at baseline and 5 months later. CP drinking was associated with greater CP depression, anxiety, and anger independent of partner drinking. Moreover, the intervention was more efficacious in reducing depression for heavy drinking CPs. CPs are often an overlooked population and resources to help support them are needed.     

The ambivalent effect of complexity on firm performance: A study of the global service provider industry

Prior literature is ambivalent about whether organizational complexity has positive or negative effects on firm performance. Using rich data on global service providers, we explore this ambivalence by disentangling performance consequences of different types of organizational complexity. We show that complexity arising from the coordination of different services and operations negatively influences profit margins through increased coordination costs, whereas complexity coming from the sophistication of particular services may positively influence margins through informational advantages. We also investigate the moderating effects of process commoditization and client-specific investments. Our findings point to critical performance dilemmas facing global service providers in a highly competitive industry, and they help better differentiate performance effects of complexity at different organizational levels.     

Dual Earner Husbands and Wives: Marital Satisfaction and the Workplace Culture of Each Spouse

This article focuses on the relationship between workplace culture and marital satisfaction for dual-earner husbands and wives (N?=?156 couples). We use contagion theory as a framework, and posit that the experiences of both partners contribute to perceptions of marital satisfaction held by individual spouses. Breaking workplace culture into three components (time demands, work pressure, and workplace social support), we find evidence in the full model of both individual (spillover) and spousal (crossover) effects for the marital satisfaction of dual-earner wives, and spousal (crossover) effects for dual-earner husbands. In particular, our analyses highlight the important role played by wives?? workplace social support. Implications of the study are discussed.     

Estimating the Nitrous Oxide Emission Rate from the Soil Surface by Means of a Diffusion Model

Soil cover methods are probably the most widely used methods for measuring the nitrous oxide emission rate from the soil surface. The methodology involves estimation of the emission rate from repeated measurements of the nitrous oxide concentration beneath a soil cover. Based on a deterministic model proposed by Hutchinson & Mosier (1981) we propose to use a diffusion process as a stochastic model for the evolution of the nitrous oxide concentrations beneath a soil cover. From this model we derive methods for statistical inference about the emission rate that significantly extend the method proposed by Hutchinson & Mosier (1981). In particular, the derived methods provide solutions to important problems with the method proposed by Hutchinson & Mosier (1981).     

Skiing and divergent ethnic identities in the multiethnic Northern Norway

This article examines first whether the skiing as the Norwegian national sport was used by the state in its assimilation strategy towards the indigenous Sámi people. One would think that skiing's central role in building a Norwegian national identity would mean that it would have a vital place in government policy towards its indigenous population. Second, the article explores how skiing became integral in the creation of a modern Sámi identity from the 1970s. The article explores how the Sámi over the last 30 years have tried to incorporate skiing and sport in the ongoing revitalizing of a Sámi identity.     

Conflicts in the habitus: the emotional work of becoming modern

This article argues that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollas's discussions of the ‘unthought known’ and of ‘transformational objects’ add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho‐social understanding of the relation between agency and change. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with a socially mobile chain of a middle‐class grandmother, mother and daughter in a period of rapid change, we describe how conflicts in the habitus are produced relationally and can either impede or motivate desires for change. Relational and object relational psychoanalytic theories offer a way to move beyond what we consider a problem in Bourdieu's theory of habitus that derives from his assumption of a subject who either consciously opts for change in habitus when faced with new social demands or non‐consciously and unconflictually reproduces habitus.