Management After Acquisition Inside Multinational Companies from Emerging Economies: The Haier Experience

Abstract

Post-M&A integration is a highly challenging issue for both buyer and seller companies in international M&A. For buyers from emerging economies, they might face even more difficulties due to the problem of “liability of origin”. In this chapter, we first review Haier’s acquisition of Sanyo’s home appliance business and compare the management philosophies of Chinese and Japanese companies, as well as their solutions to overcome the problem of “big company disease”. Then, we recount how Haier has implanted its model of “Individual-Goal Combination” into Sanyo’s management system after acquisition, and how it has helped the company to realize employees’ potential and to improve market performance. Next, we compare this case with two other M&A cases concerning Haier in Thailand and New Zealand, and illustrate how the “liability of origin” affects post-M&A integration in different cultural contexts. We conclude by giving suggestions to guide future management practices in this area.

The authors would like to thank Jingguo Du, Stuart Broadhurst, Yong Wu, and Xiaoming Yan for their support on this research project.