Rush Slowly: Multi-Speed Post-Acquisition Integration Approach and How it Impacts Strategic Renewal

We conducted a longitudinal single-case study of post-acquisition integration. We identify an underexamined integration approach that we call the “multi-speed integration approach,” which involves integrating some organizational practices rapidly and others more slowly, even within the same work unit. We specify the mechanisms through which a multi-speed integration approach was used as a means to achieve the conflicting demands for both short-term performance and long-term strategic renewal. A multi-speed integration approach generated emotional and identity ambivalence, which contributed to an oscillating strategic renewal process. The effects of the multi-speed integration approach were shaped by the companies’ members’ past integration experience, which functioned as a concrete counterfactual that helped them to appraise the ongoing integration more positively