The Antecedents of Acquisition Performance based on the Organizational Learning Theory

With a regression model, this paper studied the influence of acquisition experience and business relatedness on acquisition performance based on an empirical analysis of Chinese firms and found that both acquisition experience and business relatedness have significantly positive effect on acquisition performance of the acquiring firm. Moreover, this paper introduced legitimacy from the perspective of institutional theory and found that both acquisition experience and business relatedness have positive influence on acquisition legitimacy. It is proved that acquisition legitimacy has partial mediation effect both on the relationship between acquisition experience and acquisition performance and on the relationship between business relatedness and acquisition performance, which means acquisition experience and business relatedness can increase acquisition performance not only by integration effect of acquisition but also by gaining more support with getting high legitimacy.