The Influence Of Cross-Border Mergers And Acquisitions On Technological Innovation Capacity Of Chinese Enterprises

Innovation is the power source for enterprises’ continuous development. How to promote technological innovation ability is the key to the enterprises to build a sustainable competitive advantage. With the accelerating speed of technological change, more and more enterprises choose to acquire external knowledge and technology to enhance their technical capabilities quickly, instead of completely relying on the internal innovative research and development activities. Hence, as one of the important accesses to external knowledge and technology, M&A is favored by enterprises day by day. In particular, the financial crisis led to a number of foreign enterprises with leading technology fall into the predicament of the capital chain rupture. This gives the Chinese enterprises a good opportunity for cross-border M&As, which desiderate to break out the bottle neck of growth and achieve industrial transformation through strengthening the capacity for independent innovation. However, there is no clear conclusion about whether and how cross-border M&As promote enterprises’innovation ability. This still needs more studies. This paper chooses the influence of cross-border M&As on technological innovation of Chinese enterprises as research subject. Through theoretical research combined with case analysis, we explore M&As’influence path and mechanism on enterprises’ technological innovation, the influence factors to enterprises’technological innovation during cross-border M&As. and the innovative management mode suitable for Chinese enterprises’cross-border M&As.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows. Firstly, M&As mainly have complex effects on enterprises’technological innovation, through five paths, namely acquiring knowledge and technology, optimizing the allocation of resources, reducing market competition, instead of internal R&D, and increasing management difficulty. Secondly, in different periods of cross-border M&As, transaction relevance, corporation relation capital, core staff retention, previous M&A experience, and enterprises’ absorptive capacity, integration capability, governance capacity can promote enterprises’innovation ability, while targets’ knowledge base, technical relevance, employees’psychological perceptions, and the cultural differences have duple influence on enterprises’technological innovation. Thirdly, based on the analysis of three cross-border M&A cases, namely Joyson Electronics acquiring Preh GmbH, Wolong Holding Group acquiring ATB Group, and Jack Group acquiring Topcut and Bullmer Co., this paper verifies that transaction relevance, technical relevance, corporation relation capital, core staff retention, and previous M&A experience can actively promote enterprises’technological innovation ability. At last, this paper puts forward that Chinese enterprises can implement effective strategies for cross-border M&As and technological innovation management, to realize the strategic goals of promoting technological innovation ability and achieving industrial transformation finally, through preparing well for M&As, choosing suitable acquisition targets, retaining the core technical staffs, and optimizing allocation of the research&development resources.This research which clarifies cross-border M&As’ influencing mechanism to enterprises’technological innovation, and excavates the influence factors to enterprises’technological innovation during cross-border M&As, helps to perfect the cross-border M&As and technological innovation theory system to some extent. It also provides a theoretical reference for our enterprises to make cross-border M&A decisions. In addition, based on the analyses of some Chinese cross-border M&A cases, this article the innovative management mode suitable for Chinese enterprises’ cross-border M&As. This has important guiding significance for Chinese enterprises to carry out cross-border M&As to promote their technological innovation abilities.