A tentative model of Management Accounting and Control in the Integration Processes of Mergers & Acquisitions

Abstract

This article combines the areas of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and management accounting and control systems (MACS) by developing a tentative model that shows the important variables and how they determine MACS’ involvement in M&A integration processes. M&As have grown, measured both in numbers and size, in recent decades and have become very popular strategic business tactics to achieve economies of scale and scope. In fact, some believe that they have even exceeded the internal or ‘organic’ growth of organizations. However, approximately two of every three M&As fail to achieve the intended goals which were the stated reasons for the business deal. The explanation given for this high failure rate is often bad integration management, and this can also be assumed to be true when it comes to the integration of MACS. The aim with this article is to collect the content of the few explicit and the many implicit studies in the field and build a model that can be used for further research. Hence, this article is the result of a comprehensive literature study and it shows that the role and function of MACS in M&A integration processes can be interpreted in many different ways, above all depending on which perspective, view, or theory is used. From this follows, that the research area under investigation can be recognized in the context of three main dimensions. These are a socio-cultural one, a political-ideological one, and a technical one. These fairly theoretical and research dependent variables also have an impact on how more pragmatic variables are described. Five such main groups of more pragmatic variables are defined in this article and the MACS’ involvement in M&A integration processes is illustrated.