Individual roles to achieve knowledge integration in Mergers and Acquisitions: Completing the Knowledge Broker concept with Knowledge Developer's roles

Among researches on knowledge issues in M&As, there has been a stream underlining the importance of knowledge integration process (i.e process of transfer or combination - within or between firms -, resulting in the production of a new/renewed form of knowledge) in post merger phases. In these researches, Knowledge integration appears as a key issue for the success of M&As. Our paper aims at contributing to understand knowledge integration processes in M&As, and more precisely, the way specific individual roles intervene in these processes: their action, their abilities and their specificities. Based on an empirical study of a merger between 3 French public administrations, we propose a framework to analyze individual roles in knowledge integration processes in M&As. Based on the concept of Knowledge Broker, we specify the existing view by proposing two sub-categories of individual roles: first, Knowledge Mediators who achieve knowledge integration both by mediating knowledge between actors to lead them to produce new/renewed knowledge and by producing a new/renewed knowledge themselves; second, Knowledge Developers who achieve knowledge integration by combining themselves several areas of knowledge to produce a new/renewed knowledge out of any action of mediation between actors or specific position in a network. Such a framework contributes to a better understanding of two issues for knowledge integration in M&As literature: the importance of the human factor and the diversity of the mechanisms to achieve knowledge integration.