THE EFFECT OF HYBRD MOBILE ENGINEERS ON POST-ACQUISITION KNOWLEDGE INTEGRATION

Acquisitions can be viewed as a way of capturing scarce, firm-specific resources whose services are difficult to sell in intermediate markets. This paper suggests a unique group of mobile engineers who departed from the acquiring firms to target firms or vice versa prior to acquisitions and then they interact their previous firms due to acquisitions. We refer to them as hybrid mobile engineers. We address how hybrid mobile engineers affect post-acquisition knowledge integration between acquiring and target firms. We find that the relational capitals of hybrid mobile engineers promote post-acquistion knowledge integration. Our findings do not support the positive relationship between their intellectual capitals and post-acquistion knowledge integration. In addition, the structural integratio positively moderates the relationship between the intellectual and relational capitals of hybrid mobile engineers and knowledge integration after acquisitions. The findings of this paper imply that hybrid mobile engineers is an important mechanism to intergae knowledge and people between target and acquiring firms.