The Empirical Research On Integration Promoting Knowledge Transfer In Technology-driven M&A

As the era of knowledge economy arrives, the unique, unduplicated and inimitable knowledge in enterprises has became the source of competitive advantages, and also it has been regarded as the essence of core competence. Acquiring knowledge has became enterprises’ strategic behavior. Internal accumulation and external acquisition are two ways of acquiring knowledge. To compare with internal accumulation, external acquisition has more advantages on speed and cost. As an important method of external acquisition, technology-driven merger and acquisition (M&A) has been widely used in enterprises.No integration, no merger and acquisition. Whether the enterprise can achieve the goal of M&A depends on the result of integration. In the view of acquiring knowledge, the result of integration affects the performance of knowledge acquisition. Many scholars investigated the connotation, methods and contents of integration in detail, also the studies on the process, models of knowledge transfer after M&A have accumulated lots of research. Only few studies investigated how integration effects on knowledge transfer in ways of theoretical analysis or case study, and fewer scholars used statistical analysis.Based on the integration theory and knowledge transfer theory, this paper focused on individual knowledge transfer in M&A leaded by enterprises lagging in technology, and constructed the model of integration effecting on knowledge transfer after M&A though contextual factors effecting on knowledge transfer. The model included two testing models: one is the model of organization integration, culture integration and human resource integration effecting on knowledge transfer directly, and the other is the indirect model of organization integration, culture integration and human resource integration effecting on knowledge transfer though relationship quality and distance between the subjects of knowledge transfer.With SPSS17.0and LIRSEL8.70, the reliability test and validity test was done on351valid sample from4enterprises, then structural equation model was used to test the hypothesis. The empirical results shows that organization integration effects on knowledge transfer directly, while culture integration and human resource integration increase the performance of knowledge transfer though increasing relationship quality and decreasing distance between the subjects of knowledge transfer. In combination with the empirical results and the practice of M&A, this paper provides advices for creating context suitable for knowledge after M&A though integration. And this paper expects the future research based on the shortage of this research.