How Can Management Control Systems Contribute to Acquisition Failure? A True Story

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify what can go so wrong from the time managers decide to make an important acquisition to the time they actually liquidate their assets. When managers decide to invest in a certain project, they can normally justify its plus-value (financial and/or non-financial) to the shareholders. If not, there would be no point of investing. Therefore, how come an important investment can rapidly become a nightmare? Here, we focused on different theories that relate to managerial accounting to put light on what can go wrong from a management accounting perspective. We evaluated a specific case of acquisition/liquidation and conducted interviews to answer our research questions. We found that not considering the acquired firm control systems is definitely part of the acquisition failure. On the other side, strong post-acquisition controls can reduce losses of money and the acquiring firm wins at doing tight post-acquisition controls.