The Speed of Human and Task Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions : Human Integration as Basis for Task Integration

In practice, managers of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) draw their attention more and more to speed of integration within their M&A strategies. In a paradoxical manner, M&A research on speed of integration is still in its infancy and remains underdeveloped. Empirical findings reach from positive over negative to non-significant relationships between speed and M&A success. Carolin Proft develops a research model which encompasses task integration speed and human integration speed as independent variables influencing the dependent variable of M&A performance. She clarifies the question of how the success factor speed can be used as a tool to enhance M&A success. Based on the data collected from 101 German speaking companies she proves that task integration speed negatively influences M&A performance while human integration speed promotes M&A success. The present study is unique as it quantitatively demonstrates that the two types of integration occur at different levels of speed. Therefore, the M&A success significantly depends on the chronology of the two types of integration.