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Cultural fit has been recognized as a potential determinant of success in mergers and acquisitions. However, the concept has not yet been fully explored. To fill this shortcoming, a study was conducted to examine the role of national and corporate cultural fit in forecasting good integration between merging companies. The cultural fit in the international and domestic mergers was investigated using the innovative, nonparametric co-plot method, which facilitates the concurrent examination of both variables and observations. Results provide confirmation to the notion that national and corporate culture are independent constructs with variable attitudinal and behavioral correlates. Implications are discussed.

The relationship between perceptions of cultural differences of acquired companies' management teams and stock market gains for the acquiring firms was studied. The aim of the study was to test the hypothesis that the cultural fit between the managements of merging firms influences the interaction between shareholder gains and the relatedness of the merging organizations. Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 198 acquired companies, but the final sample of firms was reduced to 30. Based on these responses, the independent variables of cultural differences and tolerance of multiculturalism, and the dependent variable of financial performance were statistically analyzed. Results revealed an inverse intercorrelation between shareholder value and the perceptions of acquired managers' of the cultural differences between their companies and their new owners.

Byline: Yaakov Weber, Ehud Menipaz This study describes and summarises the results of several earlier studies on measuring cultural fit in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). Specifically, it provides an instrument for measuring culture in general and cultural differences in M&As in particular. The following sections define culture, explain its components, describe the measurement instrument and provide evidence for its reliability and validity. This study explores systematically the crucial yet neglected role of cultural differences in M&As based on a relatively large sample.