This study was conducted to determine whether there are differences among the top management and the intermediate- and low-level managers in terms of their perceptions of the importance of the postmerger
integration(PMI) success factors by selecting two separate cases, one each for the two M&A strategic motivations of exploitation and exploration, and conducting in-depth interviews with the managers. Next, the authors intended to identify whether there are differences in the managers’ perceptions of the order of importance of the PMI success
factors depending on the strategic motivation for M&A within the respective strata of constituents, and whether the different attention level of the top management will exert an influence on the top management and the intermediate- and low-level managers’ perceptions of the order of importance of the PMI success factors based on the attention-based view(ABV), which posits that differences in an organization’s strategic motivation will stem from the different attention level of the top management.
The study results show that identical perceptions of the order of importance of the PMI success factors were deduced in the two strategic motivations across the two cases in the case of the top management. In
the case of the intermediate-level managers, differences in their perceptions of the order of importance of the PMI success factors depending on their strategic motivation were observed, while in the case of the low-level managers, infra-level integration was singled out as the most important factor among all the PMI success factors in the two
cases. Moreover, when seen from ABV, it was deduced that the attention of the top management, which is the basis of the strategic motivation for any M&A, does not exert any influence on the top management’s perceptions of the order of importance of the PMI success factors, while it was also deduced that the different attention
level of the top management does not exert any influence on the low-level managers’ perceptions of the importance of the infra-level integration among all the PMI success factors. Finally, it was also confirmed that the top management’s perception of the importance of communication during the PMI process of the constituents is not influenced by the different attention level of the top management