[AISWorld] Extended deadline 22 of May

[Jonas Hedman]

Call for Papers

Special issue on Information System Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions

European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS)

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/index.html

Despite its importance for contemporary business, the area of information systems (IS)-integration in corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is surprisingly little researched. At the same time, IS integration is often cited as the third most important reason for M&A failure and generally some 45% of the expected benefits from an M&A are directly dependent on effective IS integration. Accenture found, only 40% of 400 interviewed enterprises reported that their last M&A-related IS integration had been ‘successful.’ With IS being the factory for more organizations, effective post M&A integration is critical to the continued operation of the separate and collective entities. At the same time, synergies are an expected fruit of the M&A activity.

The existing literature on IS integration in M&A recognizes the importance of IS-integration during mergers (Buck-Lew et al. 1992; McKiernan & Merali 1995), it presents factors that seem to affect IS integration success (Giacomazzi et al. 1997; Robbins & Stylianou 1999; Stylianou et al. 1996), suggests methods for planning of IS integration (Alaranta & Henningsson 2008), and addresses the strategic alignment between IS and M&A strategy (Mehta & Hirschheim 2007; Wijnhoven et al. 2006). However, these writings only scratch the surface of problems and opportunities related to IS integration in M&A. The collective understanding of why 60% of the M&A-related IS integration were ‘unsuccessful’, which IS endeavors are risky or are likely to be resource demanding, how organizations learn and improve in their M&A-related IS integration capabilities, and consequences of the many pathways and options in addressing post-merger integration are limited. This special issue will explore the consideration of these options, the process and practice of post-merger integration, the governance of expectations and the disciplines that serve the relevant stakeholders through the process to establishment of "new normal" operations.

Without dedicated methodologies or research based guidelines, models, methods, or theories, IS integration is doomed to proceed in an ad hoc manner. This is not surprising considering the limited, almost non-existent, research within the field that managerial practices might be based upon. Due to a dearth of theoretical insight guiding corporate practice, this special issue encourages empirical research and conceptual work that aims at theory development on system integration in the context of M&As. Although more theoretical and conceptual work is needed, the special issue will put emphasis on papers that improve our understanding of the phenomenon through clear descriptive research work. The aim of the special issue is to collect high quality research that can serve as a foundation for understanding and dealing with issues related to the organizational and management practice of IS integration during M&A. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following aspects of IS in M&A:

• • •

The role of IS in due diligences IS integration and synergies IS-integration taxonomies• The role of CIO and IS organization in M&A • IS integration capabilities and organizational learning • The differences of IS integration in mergers of non-profit and public organizations? • The role of the IS function in IS-disintegration and de-merging • Methods and tools in managing and facilitating IS integration

Guest Editors for the Special Issue

Jonas Hedman, Copenhagen Business School, jh.caict at cbs.dk Benn Konsynski, Emory University Suprateek Sarker, Washington State University
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