Information system integration in mergers and acquisitions: research ahead

European Journal of Information Systems (2015) 24(2), 117–120. doi:10.1057/ejis.2015.2 The broad aspiration of this special issue was to build upon, and contribute to, an emerging stream of research addressing information systems (IS) integration in the context of corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A). There is little doubt that the topic has significant implications for the IS discipline, in terms of both practice and academic scholarship. From a practical standpoint, M&A is an activity frequently seen around the globe, with the financial value of completed deals in 2013 alone being around US$ 2.3 trillion. Indeed, M&A is part of many corporate strategies to save costs, and to achieve diversification, market growth, elimination of competitors, and synergy. Unfortunately, in practice, many M&A initiatives fail to deliver on their promises and evidence of failures abound in the literature. For example, Haleblian et al (2009) found that only 30–40% of all M&A in the private sector create financial value for its shareholders. Literature also indicates, that in most cases, M&A lead to destruction of value both in the short or long term (Tanriverdi & Uysal, 2011). One important factor in explaining the high number of failures in corporate M&A is IS related issues (Giacomazzi et al, 1997), specifically, lack of effective integration of IS. In fact, lack of IS integration has been cited as being the third most important reason for M&A failure. On the other hand IS integration capabilities, if managed well, can lead to the realization of the economic benefits in M&A (Benitez-Amado & Ray, 2012). Indeed past research has argued that around 45% of the expected benefits from an M&A are directly dependent on effective IS integration (Toppenberg & Henningsson, 2013). Given the emerging recognition of the role of IS in M&A, there is need for deeper understanding and empirical examination of IS and M&A linkage. There is a body of work that has started to explore IS integration in the context of corporate M&A. Some of the findings relevant to the IS discipline include the recognition of the importance of IS integration during mergers (Buck-Lew et al, 1992; McKiernan & Merali, 1995), factors that contribute to the likelihood of successful integration (Stylianou et al, 1996; Robbins & Stylianou, 1999), such as IS integration strategy (Henningsson & Yetton, 2013), the importance of learning and experience (Haleblian & Finkelstein, 1999; Henningsson, 2008), the need for integration methods and tools (Alaranta & Henningsson, 2008; Henningsson & Carlsson, 2011), and the need for alignment between IS strategy and the M&A strategy (Wijnhoven et al, 2006; Mehta & Hirschheim, 2007; Baker & Niederman, 2014). This literature served as the backdrop for this issue.