HOW DO INEXPERIENCED ACQUIRERS FROM EMERGING ECONOMIES LEARN FROM THEIR FIRST CBA?

  • Xiaohu Qiao

Student thesis: Doctor of Business Administration

Abstract

In the domain of international mergers and acquisitions, a noteworthy proportion of cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) undertaken by organisations in burgeoning economies have been marked by failure. Consequently, a meticulous exploration of the learning sources and processes pertinent to CBAs becomes vital to curtail these failure rates, and to garner a comprehensive understanding of the underpinning mechanisms of knowledge development. Guided by the theoretical frameworks of organisational learning and deliberate learning mechanisms, this dissertation illuminates the learning sources, processes, and outcomes experienced by novice Chinese acquirers embarking on their initial CBAs. Through the application of purposive and snowball sampling methodologies, this study incorporates the perspectives of fifteen participants drawn from eight Chinese entities who have successfully navigated their maiden CBAs, devoid of any prior experience. In the quest for primary data, semi-structured interviews were employed, and were further bolstered by the inclusion of social media content and internal documents as auxiliary data sources. The resultant insights of this scholarly exploration can be encapsulated as follows: 1) Chinese acquirers utilise a plethora of approaches to experiential learning and garnering knowledge from others; 2) the accumulation of experience frequently transpires inadvertently within the confines of unstructured and unsystematic routines; 3) whilst informal knowledge articulation is pervasive, deliberate collective processes are conspicuously underrepresented; 4) the codification of knowledge is conspicuously absent in a majority of instances; and finally, 5) the institution and standardisation of routines is integral to the learning process during inaugural CBAs, facilitating firms to adeptly navigate the labyrinthine complexities of cross-border transactions and thereby diminish the propensity for failure.
Date of Award1 Aug 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorArjan Keizer (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • first cross-border acquisition
  • cross-border acquisition
  • inexperienced acquirer
  • organisational learning
  • deliberate learning mechanism

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