To integrate or not to integrate ? complementarity, similarity, and acquisition value creation

In this paper, the authors explain that relatedness is often associated with acquisition value creation without distinguishing between three underlying sources of synergy: business similarity, product complementarity and geographic complementarity. The authors argue that realizing value in acquisitions requires maching the type of relatedness with the appropriate degree of integration; specifically high integration for business similarity, medium integration for product complementarity and low integration for geographic complementarity. Empirical validation, broadly supporting their hypotheses comes from 88 M&As