| dc.description.abstract | In today’s high-paced and rapidly changing society, organizational change and the constant development of organizations are necessary for their survival. Globalization and technology are advancing every day. Hence, it is crucial for organizations to keep up with competition and change according to the evolving needs of the stakeholders. Since changes in organizations are becoming more relevant, the research field of organizational change is becoming increasingly popular (Rafferty et al., 2013). However, most changes do not pan out as intended. Therefore, the failure rate of organizational change is high and estimated to be around 60-70% (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2019; Kotter, 2007; Beer & Nohria, 2000).
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are commonly utilized to increase market reach and customer base with the goal of improved revenue. An acquisition is when a company purchases another company, this will be highlighted as our company of focus has recently been acquired. (Alao, 2010). Acquisitions involve measures like implementing new technology, restructuring of the company or changes in corporate culture (Beer & Nohria, 2000).
According to the Norwegian competition authority, there are over a hundred acquisitions within Norwegian companies annually (Sørgard, 2021). Globally, the number of M&A-transactions is perceived to be around 50 000 (Statista, 2023). According to most studies, the failure rate of acquisitions is high and estimated to be between 70 and 90 percent. Excessive changes like acquisitions are difficult and demanding to implement successfully, and most of them fail because employees are experiencing integration problems with the new entity (Adetona, 2022; He, 2022). Yet the service supplier business is characterized by a wave of consolidations, where many of the big international competitors are acquiring the smaller ones. Furthermore, the wave of M&A’s within this line of business is crucial as the contractors are starting to get rid of their machine parks to instead demand more of the service suppliers, thus they are expected to have a range of different machines (Brekkhus, 2020; Giæver & Selvik, 2020). The topic of M&A’s is highly relevant as it is quite common procedures, but still one must overcome difficulties to succeed as there is a great risk for failure. Therefore, it is important to understand the process of M&A’s, in order to search for new ways to improve it. | en_US |
