For the acquired organisation, an acquisition has not one narrative but two.
Respect the emotional responses of your narratives.
Why should you differentiate the acquired from the acquiring side?
Acquiring and acquired organisations are pressed to acknowledge the emotional responses acquisitions create for the sustainable performance of managers and employees. With increasing acquisitions, the likelihood of receiving acquisition narratives, with the resulting emotional responses affecting the working life of managers, increases too.
In an acquisition, a ‘buying’ (Zagelmeyer et al., 2018:101) or ‘acquiring’ (Zhou et al., 2020:2) side is to be differentiated from the ‘target’ (Stahl et al., 2011:1), ‘bought’ (Brueller et al., 2018:1808) or ‘acquired’ (Welch et al., 2020:848) entity. For years, the predominant perspective in acquisition literature has been the acquiring side.
Instead, the adjusted model of Emotional Balancing indicates that acquired middle managers would benefit from support during both announcements, as two emotional life events. It contributes to theory and the identified gap of research into 1) a better understanding of acquired middle managers’ emotional responses to the acquisition announcement 2) in respect of the under-researched phase between the pre-acquisition phase and post-acquisition phase.
Think acquisition narratives circular.
Why a circular model?
With the Circular Model of Acquisition Narrative Balancing, the author challenges and extends the conceptualisation of linear pre- and post- acquisition phases (Weber et al., 2013; Zagelmeyer et al., 2018) and adds to existing knowledge by introducing acquisitions as potentially re-occurring events in a working life. Therefore, being acquired is not a unique experience but an event occurring in stages and should be recognised as such with a model that is not linear but circular.
Why should you focus on the acquisition announcement?
Within acquisitions, the moment of the acquisition announcement is a disruptive emotional event. During this emotional event, middle managers of the target organisation learn about being acquired.
Understanding sequential announcements of acquisitions and their effects on acquired middle managers as key players in acquisitions is crucial. An acquired organisation benefits from the awareness of, and thorough reflections on, the emotional life events experienced. Even more so as future acquisitions are more likely to occur than ever.
Why should you focus on your middle management?
Organisational performance is ‘heavily influenced by what happens in the middle of the organisation, rather than at the top’ (Currie and Procter, 2005:1325). Middle managers directly impact employees' feelings, behaviour, and performance (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003). They are highly cross-functional and a key link between frontline employees and the organisation’s top management (Bamford and Forester, 2003).
Acquired middle managers' emotions can influence their subordinates’ emotions and behaviour, and, therefore, need to be understood better as they may slow, and even thwart, organisational learning and strategic renewal (Huy, 2005). This research argues for addressing the acquisition announcement’s effect on acquired middle managers because, unlike other phenomena in acquisitions, such as information processing, relative ingroup prototypicality, and merger patterns (Rosa et al., 2017), announcements can be planned, prepared and shaped as an organisation narrative, from an organisation's management to its middle managers and employees (Roundy, 2010).
The study addresses the fact that acquisitions are increasing due to organisational strategy decisions (Reynolds, née Schnurr, and Teerikangas, 2016; Brueller et al., 2018). Therefore, this study critiques existing research and argues against 1) a linear model and 2) acquisitions as one singular emotional life event. In contrast, instead of a linear succession of events during an acquisition, it argues for a recursive cycle model that shows that acquisitions are occurring more often than once in middle managers’ working lives, a field which is under-researched in acquisition literature.
Think in stages. Shape them stage by stage.
In Acquisition Narrative Balancing, the acquired CEO shapes the content (Stage 1) and delivers (Stage 2) the Pre-narrative to his middle managers. Stage 2, with the next stage, acknowledges Announcement Sequencing as the bridge. In Acquisition Announcement Balancing (Stage 3), both the acquired and the identified acquiring CEO shape the announcement of the actual acquisition which the acquiring CEO from the Post-Acquisition Announcement (Stage 4) builds on.
Hence, being acquired may happen again and should, therefore, be considered for its learning potential at every stage. As an acquisition is likely to happen again, the Acquisition Narrative Balancing Model does not end with Stage 4 but leads to Stage 1 of a potential future acquisition.