Study On Enterprise M&A And Knowledge Integration Based On The View Of Strategic Intent

Accompanied with foreign and domestic competition intensifying, as well as the enterprise merger policies being promoted in China, the enterprise mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and restructurings are fully alive, and industrial integrations start to accelerate. All kinds of statistics show that China enterprises have stepped into the golden age of M&A and restructuring. That the competitive enterprises as the main bodies merge or restructure within the same industry in large scale is no fresh news. We can foresee that the leading enterprises from the ten big industries on the state development plan will become the main force of enterprise M&A in the next phase. The large-scale enterprise M&A that China is processing have turned into the restructures of leader enterprises, and are advancing to a new realm and height, in which the enterprises aspirate to be world-class and the fortune500. The large-scale industry M&A will create and have created a lot of experience. Theoretical refinement on the M&A experience, on the one hand, can enrich existing academic research, on the other hand, can provide Chinese enterprises with experience on merger as a reference.The unique Chinese political and economic structure destines the most active subjects in M&A market to be the enterprises with national prefix, including the central enterprises and the local state-owned enterprises. Among the wave of the national enterprises M&A, the frequent, large-scale, and substantial M&A of Baosteel is a typical, and has strong representativeness and symbolic capacity. Therefore, this paper takes Baosteel as an example to investigate the strategic M&A practice and to explore the intention of enterprise M&A as well as the integration problems after merger. The research work and content of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:(1) Presentation of merger background, features and trend in China steel enterprises. According to the environment-strategic relation theory, industrial environment is an important factor that influences enterprise merger strategic decision. This paper analyzes the internal and external problems that China’s steel enterprises are faced with, explains the characteristics and trend of the enterprise M&A, and draws the outline for follow-up studies. In fact, the background that China steel industry present is not special, instead, it largely casts light upon the past, present and future of many other Chinese industries with representativeness and typicality. Thus, research conclusions on such industry will have good universality and transference.(2) To set up an analysis model of enterprise strategic acquisition and to give theoretical explain on enterprise acquisition behavior. In a country which is late-developed in M&A and in the process of system transition, China enterprises face different external environment in merger compared with that in developed countries, such as market system, merger policies and government role. Based on the theory of "integrated theoretical development view", this paper starts with the strategic intention perspective, follows the strategic decision program, integrates resource foundation view, the internalization theory, environment-strategic relation theory as well as acquisition integration theory, and constructs an strategic perspective analysis model of integrated enterprise merger to explain the intentions of China enterprises merger and the process of creating competitive advantages. Finally, this paper does matching analysis on the model through a descriptive case study.(3) To give a model on capacity integration after enterprise merger based on knowledge management. The capacity integration in enterprise merger, behind which knowledge is transferred and diffused between the merging enterprises and the target firm, is the key to create competitive advantage. Therefore, the capacity integration after enterprise merger is not only a deliver of the capacity, but also a process of knowledge management. This paper puts forward a general framework of capacity integration after merger based on the knowledge management perspective, which expounds the knowledge activities that must concern all sorts of enterprise capability integration, and that have something in common with each other. Finally, we give the example of technical capacity integration of Baosteel after merger to validate the model.(4) To empirically research on the relationships of social distance, interpersonal trust and tacit knowledge transfer after merger. This paper extensively discusses knowledge integration after merger and explores factors affect tacit knowledge transfer. From the social distance theory, we give attention to the socialities of the main bodies involved in knowledge exchange and from social distance proximity, trust and other subjective tendency to explain the condition of knowledge transfer, validate the interpretation model of social distance, interpersonal trust and tacit knowledge transfer, and then take an in-depth look at the interaction mechanism of interpersonal trust on tacit knowledge transfer between organizations. The results indicate that, in merged and merging enterprises, social distance is negatively related to interpersonal trust and tacit knowledge transfer and that interpersonal trust plays a partial intermediary role in the relationship between social distance and tacit knowledge transfer.(5) Taking technical capacity transplantation for example and based on project management method, we give an after-merger capacity integration process. Meanwhile, we analyzes the feasibility of technical transplantation managing capacity integration as a project application and management method, and provides a managing process in which the advantageous enterprises modularly transplant capacity to the target enterprises so that capacity transplantation will be scientific, systematic, routine and institutionalized. The standardized process of capacity transplantation after merger defined by this paper has the characteristics of "process consistency" and "repeatability" which the enterprises can follow.