HRM Issues and Outcomes in Domestic Mergers and Acquisitions: A Study of the Nigerian Banking Sector

Considering how corporate mergers and acquisition (M&As) are becoming an important component of the African business landscape, with significant activity recently reported for South Africa (360 deals valued at $21.98 bn), Egypt (117 deals valued at $6.84 bn) and Nigeria (24 deals valued at $0.713 bn) (Zephyr, 2010), and with countries which have previously prohibited M&A, such as Libya, now beginning to embrace it, African M&A has not received much attention from academic researchers. The growing research on M&As has largely been limited to western developed countries (c.f. Larsson and Finkelstein, 1999; Weber and Camerer, 2003) and more recently fast-growing emerging economies, with China (c.f. Dong and Hu, 1995; Cooke, 2006; Lin et al., 2009); and India (c.f. Kumar and Bansal, 2008; Budhwar et al., 2009) receiving special attention. Consequently, there is scanty knowledge about the challenges from M&As among African firms. Even within the M&A process itself, there has been a ground swell of research signifying the relevance of the human aspect in successful organizational integration (c.f. Stahl and Mendenhall, 2005). Specifically, recent articles in this journal have emphasized the role which human resource management (’HRM’) in particular may play in a successful M&A process (c.f. Antila, 2006).