Acquisitions as Corporate Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Increasing chances of firm survival requires enduring entrepreneurship or the ability to balance competing demands for exploration and exploitation. We developed how acquisitions can provide needed disruption to change a firm’s dominant orientation toward exploration or exploitation or enable a continued focus on a firm’s dominant orientation. The result is a new typology for acquisition integration associated with different pre- and post-acquisition characteristics. For example, a firm with an exploitation orientation faces different integration challenges in acquiring targets with an exploration or exploitation orientation. We also distinguished between human and task integration to enable more nuanced integration decisions that help to reconcile conflicting findings on acquisition integration decisions. Implications for management research and practice were discussed.

Citation

King, D.R., Schriber, S., Bauer, F. and Amiri, S. (2018), "Acquisitions as Corporate Entrepreneurship", Finkelstein, S. and Cooper, C.L. (Ed.) Advances in Mergers and Acquisitions (Advances in Mergers and Acquisitions, Vol. 17), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-144. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-361X20180000017006