Organizational Structure and Acculturation in Acquisitions

A congruence model of organizational design suggests that the consistency among strategy, structure, and culture enhances organizational performance. In this study, the author attempts to understand which strategy-structure and strategy-culture contingencies facilitate superior postacquisition performance. From the perspective of task interdependence, the author argues that different acquisition strategies (i.e., unrelated, vertical, related) require different levels of headquarters centralization and interdivisional integration in the organizational structure, as well as different degrees of acculturation in the organizational culture. Based on input/output (I/O) analysis, the author develops theoretical measures for different acquisition strategies to test these arguments. The results from a two-stage model capture the author’s arguments by using a sample of 154 acquisitions in the Taiwanese electronics and information sector.