Organizational Learning through Knowledge Acquisitions

Many acquisitions in the high-tech industry are motivated by a desire to share knowledge in order to stimulate organizational learning, with the ultimate aim of innovation. However, acquiring a firm does not guarantee that valuable knowledge will be successfully shared. Recent research has in fact demonstrated that failure rates in knowledge acquisitions may reach between 60 to 80 percent, figures which would indicate an absence of organizational acumen. The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of why knowledge acquisitions fail and how to manage them more successfully, by focusing on the underlying mechanisms of the micro-processes of knowledge sharing within the post-acquisition phase.