Attentional Congruence and Interfirm Dynamics : A Study of Post-Acquisition Integration in High-Tech Industries

Drawing from the attention-based view of firm (ABV), we develop the notion of attentional congruence, or the degree of similarity in managerial attention at the dyadic level, between acquirer and target. We also and examine the impact of attentional congruence on the firm-level outcomes. Based on a sample of 190 acquisitions deals in high-tech industries, we show that attentional congruence between two firms has a non-linear effect on post-acquisition innovativeness of the merged firm. In addition, we also examine the moderating effects that impact upon attentional congruence such as of strategic complementarity and that of disparity in firm size. This study goes beyond prior work which has demonstrated that managerial attention drives firm behavior — to show that managerial attentional also critically affects the dynamics between firms