Abstract:

In the current new normal stage of China’s economic development, with the continuous catalysis of supply-side reforms and industrial optimization and upgrading, more and more companies have chosen to achieve strategic growth through serial mergers and acquisitions, but the results are not always satisfactory. Previous studies have found that learning from past M&A experience can improve the companies’ M&A capabilities and subsequent performance. Some scholars have emphasized the role of failure feedback in the study of the experience influence mechanism, and there are also some scholars who have studied the durability of acquisition performance, but few scholars have specifically compared the different influence mechanisms of success and failure experience learning in serial M&A and the role of experience depreciation. This paper focuses on this topic and intends to answer the following questions. First, is only failure the mother of success? Among the previous successes and failures of mergers and acquisitions, which experience has the greater effect, is it an individual effect or an overall effect? Second, are there any boundary conditions in the mechanism of success and failure experience? Third, will M&A experience depreciate? During the period of the new normal, will the experience mechanism be different from the previous ones?

Based on the organizational learning theory and the resource dependence theory, this article puts forward the hypothesis that both the success experience and the failure experience affect the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Findings of the research on the merger and acquisition data of A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2017 through the ordinary least squares regression are as follows: (1)The success experience of previous mergers and acquisitions will promote the improvement of the merger performance. Compared with the failure experience, the success experience has a greater promotion effect. Further research finds that the impact of the failure experience on the merger performance is related to the degree of loss. The cumulative experience of small and medium losses will promote the improvement of the performance, while the cumulative experience of large losses will inhibit learning. (2)The state-owned enterprise nature of the M&A company will weaken the impact of the M&A experience on the merger performance, and there is a “resource curse” effect among state-owned enterprises. (3) The M&A experience does have a depreciation tendency. The success and failure experience in the new normal period has a greater impact on the M&A performance. M&A companies with experience in the new normal period can learn from their experience to improve performance more effectively. (4) Accumulated experience will affect the M&A selection stage and the restructuring stage, and reducing information uncertainty and improving the effectiveness of the company’s internal control after M&A can improve the performance effectively.

The research in this article has important implications. First, it emphasizes the importance of the success experience. Previous empirical studies have focused more on learning from failures. The results of this article show that at least the same importance should be attached to the success experience and the failure experience. As emphasized by Reese and Trout (2017), managers tend to study failures and neglect consolidating successes. Actually, they should take advantage of their successes and allocate more resources to successful products, because success“breeds”success. Second, surplus resources will have a crowding-out effect on the cultivation of corporate learning capabilities. State-owned enterprises should correct their blind pursuit of and excessive dependence on external resources, gain and use resources appropriately, focus on the use and creation of tacit knowledge such as M&A experience, and cultivate M&A capabilities to avoid the occurrence of the “resource curse”. Third, companies should recognize and deeply understand the different features of the current new normal period from those of the past, and use a new mentality to deal with mergers and acquisitions in the current environment; At the same time, in the light of the depreciation phenomena of mergers and acquisitions experience, rather than attaching equal importance to the merger experience of different periods, they should assign greater weight to the experience of the new normal period, and focus more on the accumulation and application of the experience of successes and failures in the new normal period.

Key words: M&A Performance, Success Experience, Failure Experience, Experience Depreciation, New Normal

摘要：

本文基于组织学习理论和资源依赖理论,从累积经验角度,分析成功和失败经验对并购公司经营绩效的作用机制及边界条件。通过对2004~2017年间A股上市公司并购数据的实证研究发现:(1)先前的成功经验会改善并购绩效,相比于失败经验,成功经验的促进作用更大,资源诅咒效应会弱化国有企业中经验的影响;(2)并购经验存在贬值现象,新常态时期经验对绩效影响更大;(3)进一步研究发现失败经验的影响与损失程度有关,中小型程度损失的累积经验有助于绩效改善,而大型程度损失的累积经验会抑制学习。本文拓展了并购经验中成功和失败经验的不同作用机制,强调了学习成功经验和重视经验贬值的必要性,对公司提升并购能力、优化并购决策与整合效率具有启示意义。

关键词: 并购绩效, 成功经验, 失败经验, 经验贬值, 新常态