Integration and reorganisation of industrial R&D: deficits and perspectives of empirical research

In today's business context, Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) have occupied a top-ranking position in their relevance for corporate strategies and growth. Presumably, every second transaction is intended to improve the acquirer's innovative capabilities by combining technologies of both companies. This, however, typically requires a complex post-merger integration project of the Research and Development (R&D) units. Particularly, the integration of R&D seems to have a significant share in sustaining a company's innovative capabilities, as it is a prerequisite for exploiting economies of scale and scope or eliminating redundancy. Surprisingly, there are very few studies dedicated to this research problem. Moreover, these studies exhibit substantial shortcomings with respect to content and methodology and thus only offer fragmentary insights. The purpose of this paper is hence to provide a review of empirical studies and to develop theoretical propositions to shape a conceptual framework for the further study of post-merger integration problems in R&D.