Joining Forces: Making One Plus One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Alliances

Chapter XIII. Joining Forces—Building M&A Competency

When we wrote our first articles on the M&A process in the 1980s and our first books on the topic in the 1990s, we noted the high failure rate of combinations and hypothesized that, stupid deals aside, what matters most in eventual M&A success is the process through which deal occurs. Now, nearly thirty years since we introduced the Merger Syndrome and highlighted the role of human, cultural, and organizational dynamics of M&A, our hypothesis has been validated in countless studies: the process, from the pre- to postcombination phase, remains the primary determinant of whether or not a deal achieves its financial and strategic objectives.

So, have managers learned nothing about combination ...