Abstract
This paper aims to advance our understanding of the social-psychological antecedents to post-merger success. We study the influence of four perceptual variables: distributive justice, procedural justice, behavioral exemplarity and decisional exemplarity, on two post-merger performance variables: satisfaction with the merger (attitudinal) and willingness to cooperate (behavioral). We contrast our four antecedent variables from a conceptual point of view, and develop hypotheses on their divergent effects on merger satisfaction and willingness to cooperate. We test these hypotheses on survey data from a merger between two European service-sector firms. Factor analyses confirm the convergent and discriminant validity of our four antecedents. Multiple regression models suggest the following: (1) Distributive justice has a large positive effect on both satisfaction with the merger and willingness to cooperate. (2) Procedural justice has a smaller positive effect on satisfaction with the merger, but no effect on the willingness to cooperate. (3) Behavioral exemplarity has a positive and large effect on the willingness to cooperate, but a positive and smaller effect on satisfaction with the merger. Finally, (4) decisional exemplarity has no effect on satisfaction with the merger and the willingness to cooperate. Additional tests suggest that the intensity of integration, i.e. the frequency of inter-organizational contacts, moderates negatively the positive relationships between distributive justice and behavioral exemplarity, and willingness to cooperate. Our results suggest that to obtain the satisfaction of organizational members, top managers should warrant distributive justice. But to gain the employees’ commitment – hence transforming positive attitudes into actual collaborative actions – they should also be exemplary., Cet article examine l’influence respective des perceptions de justice (distributive et procédurale) et des perceptions d’exemplarité (comportementale et décisionnelle) sur la satisfaction et la volonté de coopérer dans le contexte particulier d’une fusion. Nos résultats mettent en évidence l’influence majeure de la justice distributive sur la satisfaction des salariés et leur intention de coopérer, ainsi que l’importance de l’exemplarité comportementale pour gagner la coopération concrète des salariés. Dans le cas de fusion étudié, la justice procédurale et l’exemplarité décisionnelle n’ont qu’une influence marginale sur le processus d’intégration.