Employee emotions, employee resilience, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions performance

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of employee resilience on the post-merger integration phase performance in cross-border mergers and acquisitions and explores which employee emotions are important for employee resilience. Based on a survey of 136 merger and acquisition practitioners personally involved in the US cross-border mergers and acquisitions, we maintain that employee emotional resilience, which depends on employee emotions, is a prerequisite for successful post-merger integration. The study findings indicate that emotional attending, feelings of dissatisfaction, and insecurity play critical roles in employee emotional resilience during post-merger integration. A negative correlation exists between employees' emotions and employees' emotional resilience. We also find that employees’ emotional resilience improves their post-merger integration performance. This study deepens our understanding of employee resilience and post-merger integration performance and provides new perspectives for future research on employee resilience in the context of cross-border mergers and acquisitions post-merger integration phases based on empirical study.