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The purpose of this paper is to report a study of post-integration mechanisms carried out by five multinational mergers and acquisitions (M & A) transactions taken place in Indian context. This study has been woven around the concept of human integration and task integration as separate objectives of acquiring organizations to be achieved.

This study is based on descriptive research design. Qualitative data were collected, where the managers from the acquiring organizations and employees from the acquired firms have taken part in the data collection process through interviews. Interview schedule was developed for managers consisting questions on organizations’ strategy to achieve success post-M & A integration (PMI), while interview schedule developed for employees investigated their reactions after organizational change.

Results revealed that the organizations where human integration mechanisms were given due credence also harbored highly committed employees from their organizational counterparts, whereas the transactions where task integration objective was given preference while ignoring human integration, employees developed the negative emotions of anger and insecurity for their newly merged firm.

The M & A literature observes a huge gap in the field of M & As in India, especially in PMI mechanisms worldwide, as the emphasis has always been on financial and operational aspects of M & As. Thus, this study addresses this gap in research and opens the avenues for M & A researchers to consider HR as the strategic partner during M & As.

The study has important implications for MNCs operating in India and for those which want to excel the Indian market through M & A.

This paper is based on the original field work and every information given is authentic.

The purpose of this study is to follw the process perspective approach in post-M&A (mergers and acquisitions) integration studies, with a focus on human resource function, to make the research literature relevant to HR integration process up to date.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, limited systematic literature review and study in this interface has previously been published.

Therefore, this conceptual study filled in the research gap by pointing out a clear framework on HR integration in cross-border post-acquisitions, reviewing both the content and process of HR integration. This paper contributes to future research on the HR integration process perspective in theoretical directions.

It addresses the gap in research and opens the avenues for M&A researchers to consider HR as the strategic partner during M&As and to study HR aspects in an integrated process perspective view. This approach complements socialized reviews and it suggests a process perspective on how to dispersed themes and interrelate topics. It provide a clear process perspective helps to develop a concurrent research agenda, which can guide future work in the field.

Although a large contingency of theory and research has been conducted in the area of individual and interpersonal communication, relatively few theoreticians have focused on the broader character of communication at the organizational level of analysis. With the increasing emphases on total quality, leadership, adaptive cultures, process reengineering, and other organizational change and development efforts, however, the need to understand the process and function of organizational communication at a broader, more systemic level is paramount. The following paper attempts to address this issue by providing: (1) a comparative review and critique of three “classic” theoretical approaches to describing the importance of communication in organizations and the relationship between communication and organizational functioning (open systems theory, the information‐processing perspective, and the communication as culture framework); and (2) a new integrative framework—the CPR model of organizational communication—for conceptualizing and understanding the nature of communication in organizations based on constructs adapted from these three perspectives. The model is then used both in an applied example to help diagnose an organizational system and to stimulate suggestions for future research.

This study explores how a hospital works, which is important for further enhancing hospital performance. Following the introduction of a Hospital Planning Centre (HPC), changes are explored in a hospital in terms of integration (the coordination and alignment of tasks), differentiation (the extent to which tasks are segmented into subsystems), rules, coordination mechanisms and hospital performance.

A case study was conducted examining the hospital’s social network, rules, coordination mechanisms and performance both before and after the introduction of the HPC. All planning and execution tasks for surgery patients were studied using a naturalistic inquiry and mixed-method approach.

After the introduction of the HPC, the overall network structure and coordination mechanisms and coordination mechanisms remained largely the same. Integration and certain rules changed for specific planning tasks. Differentiation based on medical discipline remained. The number of local rules decreased and hospital-wide rules increased, and these remained largely in people’s minds. Coordination mechanisms remained largely unchanged, primarily involving mutual adjustment and standardization of work both before and after the introduction of the HPC. Overall, the hospital’s performance did not change substantially. The findings suggest that integration seems to “emerge” instead of being designed. Hospitals could benefit, we argue, from a more conscious system-wide approach that includes collective learning and information sharing.

This exploratory study provides in-depth insight into how a hospital works, yielding important knowledge for further research and the enhancement of hospital performance.

Integration, that is, the coordination and alignment of tasks, is widely promoted as a means to improve hospital performance. A previous study examined integration and differentiation, that is, the extent to which tasks are segmented into subsystems, in a hospital's social network. The current study carries this research further, aiming to explain integration and differentiation by studying the rules and coordination mechanisms that agents in a hospital network use.

The current case study deepens the analysis of the social network in a hospital. All planning tasks and tasks for surgery performance were studied, using a naturalistic inquiry approach and a mixed method.

Of the 314 rules found, 85% predominantly exist in people's minds, 31% are in documents and 7% are in the information system. In the early planning stages for a surgery procedure, mutual adjustment based on hospital-wide rules is dominant. Closer to the day of surgery, local rules are used and open loops are closed through mutual adjustment, thus achieving integration. On the day of surgery, there is mainly standardization of work and output, based on hospital-wide rules. The authors propose topics for future research, focusing on increasing the hospital's robustness and stability.

This exploratory case study provides an overview of the rules and coordination mechanisms that are used for organizing hospital-wide logistics for surgery patients. The findings are important for future research on how integration and differentiation are effectively achieved in hospitals.

A key challenge for hybrid organizations is managing to recombine the different institutional logics they incorporate while navigating complex, fast-changing environments. To examine how hybrids address this issue, the authors analyze the evolution of the Italian fiscal police – the Guardia di Finanza – from its foundation in 1862. Building on this unique case of a fiscal law enforcement agency that incorporates public fiscal and military logics, the authors propose that hybrid organizations can integrate the different logics they incorporate on the basis of four mechanisms. The mechanisms of upward and downward vertical integration trigger the integration of different logics throughout the entire organization. Integrated horizontal task extension and integrated horizontal competency extension enable an organization to manage a broader range of tasks while it develops the competencies that environmental complexity demands. These four mechanisms interact and, when properly managed, reinforce each other. With this chapter, the authors contribute to research on the processual nature of organizational hybridity and to broader research on the role of structures and competencies in dealing with environmental complexity.

The effective management of inter-organizational integration is central to complex projects. Such projects pose significant challenges for integration, as organizations struggle with constantly changing inter-organizational interdependencies and must develop and adapt integration mechanisms to meet new demands. The purpose of this paper is to understand what kinds of integration mechanisms are used and how they are developed and adjusted during the infrastructure alliance projects.

This study provides empirical evidence of integration dynamics in project alliancing by analyzing two infrastructure alliance projects – a complex tunnel construction project and a railway renovation project. The research approach is an inductive case study.

This paper identifies integration mechanisms adopted in two case projects and three central triggers that led to changes in the integration mechanisms: project lifecycle phase, unexpected events and project team’s learning during the project.

Integration capability should be a precondition for alliance project organizations and requires the adoption of a wide range of integration mechanisms, as well as an ability to adjust those mechanisms in response to everyday dynamics and emergent situations.

Although unplanned contingencies and the responses to them represent important influences in organizations, there is limited amount of research on the dynamics of integration. The findings will be of value in supporting the management of inter-organizational integration in complex, uncertain and time-critical construction projects.

This paper aims to deal with knowledge integration in projects, focusing on teams that deal with exploitative nature of knowledge work and implement standard solutions with minor refinements developed over time. In the research the authors seek to analyze how the organizational control mechanisms adopted within project teams that deal with exploitative nature of knowledge work influence knowledge integration outcomes.

The research unfolded considering a single case study, as this approach was considered useful in gaining in‐depth, holistic understanding of the phenomenon studied. The authors started with a preliminary on‐site observation done with the aim of making subsequent interviews simpler and more productive. They therefore conducted semi‐structured interviews with the head of human resources and with two project managers and four members of two project teams.

The results show how in coherence with Grant's classification it is possible to argue that in this context the main control mechanism to integrate knowledge is provided by different forms of standardization. In the case of the company under investigation, formal control mechanisms based on a calculative approach are seen as a way to rule out the process of product delivery and enable effective knowledge integration by clarifying tasks and responsibilities.

This paper witnesses that, in exploitative project teams, formal control mechanisms may play the role of administering information exchange in order to achieve projects outcome and the desired level of knowledge integration.

The purpose of this paper is to perform empirical tests to explore the influence of social integration mechanisms on organizations’ absorptive capacities theorized by Zahra and George.

This study uses a cross‐sectional design to test the relationships between potential absorptive capacity, three social integration mechanisms (cross‐functional teams, participation in decision making, and self‐managing teams), and realized absorptive capacity, in a sample of 92 organizations that bid competitively to provide products and services to a US university.

An organization's use of cross‐functional teams is negatively related to its realized absorptive capacity and negatively moderates the relationship between potential and realized absorptive capacity. Self‐managing teams negatively moderate the relationship between an organization's potential absorptive capacity and its realized absorptive capacity.

The cross‐sectional design allows tests of relatedness but does not support cause‐and‐effect inferences.

Managers who follow the prescriptive implications of using social integration mechanisms to enhance their organization's absorptive capacity may actually hinder it. The type of social integration mechanism is an important consideration for managers of firm strategies.

This study extends and challenges the literature on absorptive capacity through its empirical analysis of the role of social integration mechanisms on an organization's absorptive capacity. Social integration mechanisms can have mixed moderating effects on the absorptive capacity development process, and potential absorptive capacity is not easily transformed into realized absorptive capacity. This study expands the context of absorptive capacity beyond R&D settings and incorporates a task environment that allows a direct linking of inputs and outputs.

This study employs situated learning theory to elucidate the mechanisms of interorganizational collaboration by analyzing the relationships among absorptive capacity, institutional compensation, task cognitive integration and interorganizational collaboration in BIM-enabled construction projects.

An online questionnaire survey was conducted with managers and professionals involved in building information modeling (BIM-) enabled construction projects, and 220 valid responses were received. Data were analyzed by means of the linear regression models and bootstrap method.

The results show that (1) absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration have a positive impact on interorganizational collaboration; (2) institutional compensation partially mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (3) task cognitive integration fully mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (4) institutional compensation and task cognitive integration serially and fully mediate the relationship between absorptive capacity and interorganizational collaboration and (5) the serial mediating model has a greater indirect effect than the other two models considered in this study.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the way to break through the three types of organizational boundaries (i.e. syntactic, semantic and pragmatic organizational boundaries) and provide an internal collaborative mechanism from the perspective of situated learning theory. This study presents the critical effects of absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration on interorganizational collaboration, selects the enhanced mediating model for explaining the effects of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration and enables managers to update the traditional collaborative model in BIM-enabled construction projects.