해외기업에 인수된 한국인 종업원들의 직무만족에 관한 연구

Since the financial crisis of 1997, international acquisitions by foreign firms for the purpose of restructuring financially distressed Korean firms have grown steadily. Despite this trend, empirical studies on cross-border M&As in Korea are insufficient compared to those in the U.S., Europe, or Japan. One of the significant factors affecting successful integration after acquisitions is an effective human resource management (HRM). Believing that integration after acquisitions influences firm performance through employee’s cooperative behaviors, post merger integration (PMI) research focusing on employees seems meaningful. If employees do not have the cooperative will and intention to accomplish assignments, the integration synergies cannot be expected even if the employees have the ability and competence to do the work. This implies that a negative change in employees’ job satisfaction during the PMI needs to be properly and carefully managed for the positive results after the acquisition. Previous research on HRM related to international acquisitions overlooked the psychological factors that employees may experience. In addition, a comparative analysis between the phenomenal and psychological factors after international acquisitions affecting Korean employees’ job satisfaction has not been examined before. We need to understand how different factors such as cultural difference and restructuring efforts affect employees’ job satisfaction after the international acquisition. Accordingly, we categorized the change of organizational culture and identity as the psychological factors, and the change of organi-zational replacement and restructuring as the phenomenal factors that may affect job satisfaction. We compared the influence of these factors on employees’ job satisfaction. 513 survey questionnaires were responded by employees who were working for 15 different firms that had been internationally acquired. An interesting result that was not shown in the previous research was found. A change in identity and culture after the international acquisition was shown to be a more important factor that affected employees’ job satisfaction than the phenomenal factors such as restructuring or job rotation. The result might reflect only the Korean-specific context but mandates a careful management of psychological factors of Korean employees after cross-border acquisitions. Managerial issues are discussed and further research focusing on employee’s psychological changes is recommended at the end.