SW 기업 M&A 주요 영향요인과 성과에 관한 탐색적 연구

Global M&A, especially in SW, is increasing significantly due to rapid changes in the ICT-based business environment, but related studies are very scarce. This study investigated the influence of 690 M&A data of US SW companies from 1986 to 2020, three categories and six causal variables that affect sales growth and patent application growth. As a result of the analysis, the rate of increase in manpower had a positive effect on the sales growth rate, the rate of increase in R&D expenses had a negative effect on the rate of increase in R&D expenses, and the rate of increase in R&D expenses had a positive effect on the rate of increase in patent applications. For a clearer verification of the R&D expenditure growth variable, an additional analysis was performed on the impact of the sales growth rate using the employee growth rate as a parameter. The R&D expenditure growth rate showed a significant positive influence in the total effect through the employee growth rate parameter rather than the direct effect on the sales growth rate. Therefore, it is necessary for the acquiring company to systematize an integrated strategy that can ultimately derive both financial and innovative performance through continuous R&D activities and seek to share knowledge, derive productivity, and sales synergy based on human resources after M&A. In the future, when the importance of M&A for SW companies becomes more important, the accumulation of related studies is required.