Content area
Full text
Research into acquisitions has commonly taken either a financial markets approach or an organizational behavior approach. The former conceives of acquisitions as primarily financial transactions, and through this process, performance is measured by examining the impact on share price, typically during a narrow window surrounding the announcement date. Omitted from view is the process of acquisition management that unfolds after the transaction has taken place. By contrast, researchers trained in organizational behavior have been concerned primarily with the challenge of combining two distinct organizations, and they have examined, among other things, clashes of culture and the forging of a new organizational identity. Omitted from this view is a sense of the larger strategic objectives that guide the acquisition. Missing until now has been an examination of the strategic management of acquisitions, in which researchers take a process perspective and focus on intrafirm variables, but they examine these variables within the context of the firm's strategic management.
This gap is filled admirably by Managing Acquisitions: Creating Value through Corporate Renewal, by Philippe C. Haspeslagh and David B. Jemison. In the authors' view, corporate acquisitions are intended to develop organizational capabilities, which can be created only through careful management of the acquisition process. They focus on the process of developing capabilities and the transfer of skills, examining in depth the intraorganizational dynamics and interactions that either facilitate or impede value creation. Issues of change, conflict, and dislocation are placed within the broader context of strategic management.
The book is organized into five parts plus three appendices. Part I presents the theoretical orientation of the book, emphasizing that acquisitions must seek to "create value" rather than merely to "capture value," and that the integration process is key to value creation. Especially noteworthy is Chapter 2 ("A Capabilities View of Value Creation"), which offers a cogent overview of the theoretical terrain and distinguishes this book from prior research. The core of the book is given over to the processes of acquisition decision and acquisition integration. Part II ("Managing the Acquisition Decision Process") replaces a purely analytical approach with a process view, characterized by search and screening, changing expectations, and gathering momentum. In this section, the authors do a good job of presenting acquisitions as one form of resource allocation...