Acquired Inventors’ Productivity after Horizontal Acquisition: Managing the R&D Integration Process

Effective integration of the R&D functions of the acquired and acquiring firms is essential for knowledge recombination after acquisition. However, prior research suggests that the post-acquisition integration process often damages the inventive labor force. We argue that an examination of the multifaceted nature of the integration process further enhances our understanding of which conditions will be more or less detrimental for corporate inventors. We focus on R&D teams which are the immediate organizational context in which inventors operate and drawing on insights from learning theory and evolutionary economics we posit and find that the reorganization of R&D teams after acquisition harms acquired inventors? innovative performance. Though, the implementation of other integration decisions can mitigate or aggravate this negative effect.