When Forgetting is the Key - The Value of Unlearning Activities during Post-Acquisition Integration

Gaining access to externally created knowledge is often the driving force behind mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Despite the knowledge acquisition and learning opportunities that M&As provide, leveraging the benefits is often difficult to achieve due to organizational misfit and failure in the integration process. While the importance of embedding learning activities into post-acquisition is widely known, the flipside of learning - namely unlearning - is often neglected.

In this article, we spotlight the role of unlearning activities to reconcile organizational misfit during post-acquisition integration. We suggest three organizational misfit dimensions, which potentially impede M&A success. Furthermore, we suggest that post-acquisition integration is more than simply transferring knowledge from the acquired to the acquiring firm; it also involves the substitution and deletion of established but obsolete knowledge - that is, unlearning - to pave the way for new learning, to reconcile misfit during integration and, ultimately, to make a merger or acquisition a success

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