TRUST DYNAMICS IN ACQUISITIONS: A CASE SURVEY GÜNTER K. STAHL, RIKARD LARSSON, INA KREMERSHOF, AND SIM B. SITKIN Drawing on the organizational trust literature and research on postmerger integration, the authors develop a model that conceptually synthesizes the antecedents and consequences of trust in acquired organizations. The model proposes that the acquiring and target firms’ relationship history, the inter- firm distance, and the acquirer’s integration approach will affect target firm member trust in the acquiring firm’s management. Target firm member trust, in turn, may influence several sociocultural integration outcomes as well as postacquisition performance.The results of a case survey suggest that certain aspects of the relationship history and interfirm distance, such as the firms’ collaboration history and preacquisition performance differences, are poor predictors of trust, whereas integration process variables, such as speed of integration, communication quality, and acquirer multiculturalism are major factors influencing trust.The implications for postmerger integration research and practice are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Keywords: mergers and acquisitions, postmerger integration, trust, case survey Introduction F or the past three decades, a growing body of research has addressed the vari- ables that affect the success of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Despite this large body of research, however, the key factors for M&A success and the reasons why so many M&A fail remain poorly understood. In a meta-analysis of 93 empirical studies, King, Dalton, Daily, and Covin (2004) revealed that the performance of acquiring firms failed to surpass that of nonacquiring firms. This meta-analysis also showed that none of the most commonly researched antecedent variables (degree of diversification, degree of relatedness, method of payment, and prior acquisition experience) were significant in explaining variance in postacquisition perfor- mance. King et al. (2004) concluded that “despite decades of research, what impacts the performance of firms engaging in M&A activ- ity remains largely unexplained” (p. 198). In recent years, research attention has shifted to the less tangible sociocultural vari- ables and human resource issues involved in the postmerger integration process as possible contributing factors to the success or failure of M&A. Variables such as cultural fit (Stahl & Voigt, 2008; Weber, Shenkar, & Raveh, 1996); management style similarity (Datta & Grant, 1990; Larsson & Finkelstein, 1999); the pat- tern of dominance between merging firms (Cartwright & Cooper, 1996; Hitt, Harrison, & Ireland, 2001); the acquirer’s degree of cultural tolerance (Chatterjee, Lubatkin, Correspondence to: Günter K. Stahl, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Augasse 2-6, Vienna, Austria, Phone: +43-(1)-31336-4434, E-mail: guenter.stahl@wu.ac.at Human Resource Management, Human Resource Management, September–October 2011, Vol. 50, No. 5, Pp. 575 – 603 © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI:10.1002/hrm.20448