Eads

ARTICLE IN PRESS international business review
International Business Review 17 (2008) 28–38 www.elsevier.com/locate/ibusrev

The contribution of intercultural management to the success of international mergers and acquisitions: An analysis of the EADS group
Christoph Barmeyera,1, Ulrike Mayrhoferb,Ã a ´es ` ´ Ecole de Management de Strasbourg, CESAG (Centre d’Etude des Sciences Applique a la Gestion), Universite Robert Schuman, ˆt-Noire, 67085 Strasbourg, France 61 avenue de la Fore b ´ IAE de Lyon, Centre de recherche Magellan (Euristik), Universite Jean Moulin and Groupe ESC Rouen, 6 cours Albert Thomas, 69008 Lyon, France Received 2 November 2005; received in revised form 24 February 2007, 4 June 2007; accepted 1 December 2007

Abstract This article examines the contribution of intercultural management approaches to the success of mergers and acquisitions. The authors characterise international mergers and acquisitions as well as intercultural learning practices. They analyse the integration process of EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company), resulting from the merger of the French company Aerospatiale-Matra, the German company DASA and the Spanish company CASA by illustrating the impact of cultural differences on managerial situations. These situations may have both conflicting and complementary aspects, as it will be shown in the paper. Intercultural management approaches allow to overcome conflicts and thus contribute to the success of international mergers and acquisitions. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Acquisition; Integration process; Intercultural management; Merger

1. Introduction Since the early 1980s, mergers and acquisitions have developed considerably on both a European and worldwide scale. After the impressive rise in the number of mergers and acquisitions in the later part of the 1980s, a rapid progression of cross-border mergers as well as a significant increase in the value of transactions marked

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