Leadership and Human Resources for M&A success

Abstract

Through the economic crises in the last years a question is today even more important than in the past how to create successful Merger & Acquisition (M&A) projects to win back the invested capital in shorter times and to create a sustainable growth of companies. To answer this question in the past a lot of attention was given to hard keys just like synergy evaluation, Integration project planning and due diligence. But more and more also the so called soft factors like leadership and human resources where seen as key factors for Merger & Acquisitions success. The purpose of this study is therefore trying to exploit the immense potential that leadership and human resources have for successful Merger & Acquisition projects. After investigation of the human factor and why mergers succeed or fail, a comprehensive literature review has been made to show structure and types of integration processes. Through this literature review three soft keys (selection of the management team, cultural issues and communication) for Mergers & Acquisitions success have been identified which all are very important for the topics leadership and human resources. After this result, in the research design the hypothesis has formed, that leadership and human resources are responsible for the success of M&A projects. To prove this hypothesis, a case study on the successful M&A project of Maersk and Royal P&O Nedlloyd N.V. has been made to investigate the handling of the soft factors in this project. The result was that the project team has put the highest attention to the soft factors and this was the basis of success. Out of this experience the author created a model for successful integration processes based on the soft factors human resources and leadership.