Influence of Post-Merger Integration Strategies on Employee Satisfaction

Research on M&As usually focuses on developed countries such as the U.S. and European countries and ignores emerging economies including Korea. This paper seeks to introduce the Korean experience of M&As and compare international and domestic M&As that have been formed in Korea. We examined factors that affect employees’ satisfaction after the acquisitions, focusing on human issues, organizational structure, and cultural integration. Our findings indicate that restructuring negatively affects employee satisfaction. Both national culture and organizational culture demonstrate a significant effect on employee satisfaction. This paper also provides interesting managerial implications for suitable integration strategies. By analyzing the intensity and the direction of changes which followed the M&As, we showed that acquired Korean employees did not simply reject changes after the acquisition but welcomed a less-hierarchical, informal structure and a market-oriented strategy. Managerial implications summarized at the end of the paper.