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1. Introduction
The study of mergers and acquisition (M & A) is an established body of literature in management research (Collis and Montgomery, 1997; Keil et al. , 2013; Haleblian et al. , 2009; Porter, 1980). However, the success of external growth strategies has been limited and the most recent deals do not show any meaningful difference with respect to M & A failure rates (Bruner, 2004; Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006; Hitt et al. , 2009; Thanos and Papadakis, 2012). Unidentified mediators seem to drive variance in M & A performance (King et al. , 2004).
Over time, research on M & A success and failure has analyzed synergy with reference to many areas of investigation and several topics (Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006; Chatterjee, 1986; Devos et al. , 2009; Homburg and Bucerius, 2006; Papadakis and Thanos, 2010; Shaver, 2006; Sirower, 1997; Zaheer et al. , 2013; Zhou, 2011; Zollo and Meier, 2008). Studies have defined the synergy concept as "the increase in performance of the combined firm over what the two firms are already expected or required to accomplish as independent firms" (Sirower, 1997, p. 20). Many M & A frameworks utilize the degree of synergy realization as a measure of a deal's success (Larsson and Finkelstein, 1999). Similarly, a lack of synergy value and a realized synergy that is valued lower than its potential are measures of M & A failure. Indeed, the value difference between synergy realization and synergy expectations has been increasingly used to investigate M & A performance in empirical studies (Gates and Very, 2003). However, despite the greater attention to synergy, disappointing performance have followed most announcements with high synergy expectations. A typical example of this phenomenon is AT & T's 1991 acquisition of NCR Corporation, one of the largest acquisitions in the computer industry (Lys and Vincent, 1995). The acquisition by AT & T resulted in negative synergies of $1.3-$3.0 billion. Moreover, most of the executives responsible for M & A believe to have overestimated the synergy value, thus underlining the relevance of that error to the deal failure (Harding and Rovit, 2005). In addition, some scholars underline the negative effects that the difficulties to achieve synergistic potential can have on M & A failure, arguing that...