Mergers and Acquisitions

3Context of change

The context of change relates to dynamism in external and internal relationships, as well as organizational responses to them (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999), or temporality of actions (Heracleous & Barrett, 2001; Stouten, Rousseau, & De Cremer, 2018). It is hardly surprising that large-scale change efforts, such as acquisitions, impact relations with internal and external interest groups. Still, research mainly considers one stakeholder at the time. The context of change surrounding acquisitions is also likely to be idiosyncratic (e.g., Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005), so we focus on summarizing stakeholders that firm managers need to consider. For example, acquisitions change relationships with internal and external stakeholders ...