跨国收购的价值创造和整合战略:对中国情境研究的启示

Value creation and integration strategies during CBMAs:Implications of research on Chinese firms’ CBMAs

与传统跨国公司不同,新兴经济企业主要采用跨国收购的海外进入模式。最近的跨国收购综述(SHVP)并没有反映这一点。本综述旨在更新SHVP的综述,特别关注发达国家和新兴经济情境的比较。本文将综述的主题限定于价值创造和整合战略。综述表明:对于价值创造支脉,相对于经济金融领域的研究,行为理论和战略管理领域的研究更能突出新兴经济企业跨国收购的独特性。此外,经验研究发现的不一致反映了理论及其边界的不明确以及研究方法的局限。对于整合战略支脉,相对于一般收购的整合研究,新兴经济企业跨国收购整合战略的经验研究非常有限。这些结论构成了研究中国企业跨国收购的重要跳板。基于此,我们发展了一个基于研究情境、理论范式、研究支脉、研究议程和研究方法的跨国收购研究理论框架,并提出未来非常有潜力的研究方向。

During the evolution of cross-border mergers and acquisitions(CBMAs)research,SHVP’s review paper represents a key summary.However,fifteen years have passed since SHVP review.The CBMA research and practices have developed significantly during the past fifteen years.One of the major change is the phenomenon growth of CBMAs by emerging economy firms.On the other hand,while the CMBA research in the context of emerging economy falls behind the practices,it grows very quickly but there is no systematic review.We aim to upgrade SHVP review by incorporating the recent fifteen-year research.Contrary to traditional multinational corporations,emerging economy firms use cross-border mergers and acquisitions as primary entry mode.The recent SHVP review has not taken it into consideration.This review aims to address this,with a particular emphasis on the comparison of developed countries and emerging economies.The review focuses on two streams of research:value creation and integration strategy,which are core issues of strategic management and organization theory.First,the essentials of CBMAs are to create value,so examining whether CBMA activities create value becomes core issue.Second,CBMAs only offer potential opportunity to create value,the key to realize it depends on integration strategy.The two steams demonstrate striking distinctiveness in terms of assumption and dominant theories.Value creation stream assume investor cognition is the source of value,while integration strategy stream assume integration is the source of value.Furthermore,the former stream tends to use economics and finance theories as theoretical framework while the latter stream use organization theories such as knowledge-based view as theoretical framework.It suggests that,for the stream of research on value creation,the uniqueness of emerging economy firms’CBMAs can be more prominent using behavioral theory and in strategy management research than in economics and finance research.On the one hand,strategic management studies argue that the purposes of CBMAs by developed country firms are creating value using home country advantage,while for emerging economy firms,the main purposes are seeking strategic assets.On the other hand,economics and finance research tends to assume CBMAs create or destruct value,yet does not examine how do managers create value.In addition,empirical studies show substantialinconsistencies,which can be attributed to the ambiguity of theories and their boundaries and the limitations of research design.The dominant research design is using event study method,which has a shortcoming of too short time windows.Furthermore,relative to studies in economics and finance area,studies in behavioral theory and strategic management area are more likely to demonstrate the uniqueness of CBMAs in the context of emerging economy,such as seeking national pride and strategic assets.For the integration strategy stream,relative to general integration research,empirical research on integration strategy of emerging economy acquirers is very scarce,which makes it difficult for us to compare findings in the context of developed and emerging economies.The fundamental issues such as integration level,integration speed,and the tradeoff between integration and autonomy are simply not touched in prior studies.However,managers in emerging economy firms conducting CBMAs have to face these key decisions.These issues could represent new meanings in the context of emerging economy(e.g.,adopting light touch integration strategy and emphasizing autonomy of target firms)and therefore are significant theoretical innovation opportunities for researchers.These findings represent an important springboard to study Chinese firms’CBMAs,for which we develop a framework incorporating various dimensions:theoretical paradigms,contexts,streams of research,research agenda and methodology.For example,the theoretical paradigm dimension entails economics,strategic management and organization theory and the methodology dimension is specified as process and variation approach.According to these dimensions,the research on CBMAs could be divided into six cells,in which relevant literature can be well positioned and organized.As far as research contexts are concerned,the CBMA research in emerging economy context can be either context-specific or context-free research,and can be either context embedded theory or context effects theory.In terms of methodology,although both variance and process approach can be used in two streams of research,there usage should never be equal.Generally speaking,it is more appropriate to use variance approach in value creation studies,and process approach in integration strategy studies.We also discuss the directions for future research in Chinese firm context.For the value creation stream,future research may explore the source of value destruction of Chinese firms’CBMAs(over emphasis on value creation is not consistent with high failure rate of CBMAs),may reconcile theinconsistency of findings of prior empirical studies using unified theoretical perspectives,and may need more rigorous and various research designs(in addition to traditional event study method).For the stream of integration strategy,the directions of future research include examining temporal dimension of post-acquisition integration by longitudinal studies,resolving the tradeoff between integration and autonomy(be better viewed as an ambidexterity strategy),and exploring how post-acquisition integration facilitates capability upgrading.After all,assets are easy to acquire,yet it is a big challenge to integrate these assets and transform them to capabilities.The contributions of this review are as follows.First,we update the SHVP review by incorporating research in the last decade.Second,we review the empirical research on CBMAs with a particular focus on comparing the CBMAs by developed country and emerging economy firms.Third,based on the two streams of research on value creation and integration strategy and the above comparison,we develop a comprehensive analytical framework including research context,theoretical paradigm,streams of research,research issue and methods.Finally,we propose several promising directions of future research in CBMA area from perspectives of Chinese firms.In short,the present literature review shows that the empirical studies of CBMAs in the context of emerging economy are still at its infancy stage.Given that the phenomenal growth of CBMAs by Chinese firms,the scholarly research falls substantially behind,which greatly harms our understanding toward the phenomena and knowledge accumulation.It’s time to change this situation and there are great opportunities ahead.