Mergers and Acquisitions in Practice

10Multiple Shared Identities in Cross-Border M&As

Anna Lupina-Wegener and Rolf van Dick

Introduction

The recent academic literature reveals that constructing a shared identity is crucial to the success of mergers and acquisitions (Lupina-Wegener, Schneider, and van Dick, 2011; Marks and Mirvis, 2011). Shared identity has been typically conceptualized as both content (Gaertner et al., 1993)—that is, the perception of a common ingroup identity—and process (van Dick, Ullrich, and Tissington, 2006)—that is, the degree of identification with the new organization (see Haslam, 2001, and Haslam, Postmes, and Ellemers, 2003, for conceptualization of shared identity in terms of content and process). While past research has focused on M&As of freestanding ...