Acquisitions, Organizational Culture and Performance: Empirical Evidence from Acquired Company in Serbia

Acquisitions are the most popular internationalization and growth strategies in developed economies. Recent years record increasingly intense acquisition trend in emerging economies as well, where these transactions are perceived as a powerful and important mechanism in the development of markets and local companies. Given that emerging economies are characterized by an obsolete socialist administrative heritage, inefficient human resources, obsolete management practices, and poor company performance (Bogicevic Milikic & Janicijevic, 2009), the transition of these economies means changes in the institutional and economic environment, as well as changes in the way companies operate. The acquisition of companies that do not use their potential requires the acquiring company to implement radical changes, in order to improve the acquired companies’ performance, which, among other things, includes changes in organizational culture. Organizational culture, as a complex organizational phenomenon, affects the sharing of common values, assumptions and norms, employee behaviour trend, as well as various management aspects. Hence, the