DP2015-22

When Organizational Ju stic e Matters for
Affective Merger Commitm ent*
Ralf BEBENROTH
Kai Oliver THIELE
June３, 2015

* The Discussion Papers are a series of research papers in their draft form, circulated to encourage
discussion and comment. Citation and use of such a paper should take account of its provisional character.
In some cases, a written consent of the author may be required.

When Organizational Justice Matters for Affective Merger Commitment

Corresponding author
Ralf Bebenroth
Kobe University
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
657-8501 Kobe-shi, Nada-ku, Rokko-dai 2-1 Japan
Phone: +81 78 803-7021
Fax: +81 78 803-7021
E-mail: rbeben@rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp

Kai Oliver Thiele
Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH)
Human Resource Management and Organizations (HRMO)
Schwarzenbergstraße 95 (D)21073 Hamburg
Germany
Phone: +49 40 42878 3772
Fax: +49 40 42878 4471
E-mail: k.thiele@tuhh.deWhen Organizational Justice Matters for Affective Merger Commitment

Abstract
We investigate when organizational justice matters to employees’ commitmentin the post-acquisition process after a company is overtaken in a cross-borderacquisition. There is overwhelming evidence that employees who are treated fairly
during acquisitions are more committed to their new firms. We extend this finding by
dividing organizational justice into three sub-dimensions: informational justice,interpersonal justice, and procedural justice. We find evidence that procedural justice isan important antecedent of affective merger commitment at an early stage of theintegration period, while informational justice becomes important at a later stage.
Further analysis on heterogeneity between the target firm’s employees and thebidder firm’s employees reveals that, immediately after the acquisition, target-firm’s
employees value knowing where they will be at the new firm (procedural justice), whilebidder-firm employees are more concerned about communication and transparency(informational justice). Our results point to the importance of organizational justice in across-border M&A setting and the need for a separate study of issues related to bidderfirms and target firms.

Keywords: Organizational Justice, Informational Justice, Interpersonal Justice,
Procedural Justice, Affective Merger Commitment.

11. Introduction
Firms seek to create value through mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that allow them toacquire new technologies, diversify their portfolios, or enter foreign markets (Faulkner,
Teerikangas, & Joseph, 2012). Cross-border deals in particular have become a popular
strategy for helping firms remain competitive in global markets. Even companies fromemerging markets bid for western targets (Boateng, Qian, & Tianle, 2008; Chatzkel &Ng, 2013).
Although there have been numerous attempts to determine how to undertake theintegration process (e.g., Ellis et al. 2009; Senn, 2008), failure to generate the desired
added value remains common, as either the acquisition fails financially in that it does
not generate the desired returns, or eventually the strategic intentions of the
management cannot be met (Dauber, 2009; Knilans, 2009). Cartwright and Schoenberg(2006) report that the overall success rate of cross-border deals is usually less than 50
percent, an unpleasant phenomenon that has been widely discussed in literature. While
research on M&As has originated in finance and strategic management, these researchareas have not yet fully explained the driving forces behind the success or failure of amerger or acquisition. For that reason, focus has shifted toward the human side of theequation, with a majority of articles published after the year 2000 addressing the humanfactor (Mirc, 2014).
Not surprisingly, M&A leads to human integration problems; it is the rare CEO
who does not mention the human factor as critical during the course of a merger. The
target firm’s employees are often in the difficult situation of adjusting to the buyer firm,
and many companies even restructure, making the adjustment all the more challenging.
Target employees may fear having to get out of their routines or may expect to be laid
off. The resulting anxiety causes some employees to enter a largely unproductive,
passive mode of working, while employees with high potential leave the firm.
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Employees from the bidder firm can also be affected negatively since they often need tobuild new teams of both bidder and target employees (Appelbaum, Serena, & Shapiro,
2004). Even if future working conditions are generally set up to be fruitful and positive,
employees may anticipate difficulties, which leads to decreased commitment and otherissues.
A successful acquisition must take employees’ feelings into consideration andwin their commitment to the M&A process, so we study the “human side of M&A” byinvestigating how employees’ perceptions of justice affect their affective commitment
to the merger or acquisition. While other researchers have focused on behavioral
outcomes like identification or satisfaction (Dick, Ullrich, & Tissington, 2006), we
focus on the affective merger commitment (AMC) by adapting items from Herscovitch
and Meyer (2002) (e.g., “I believe in the value of this affiliation”).
Several studies have analyzed the role of justice as a source of value creation in
the course of an acquisition (e.g., Ellis, Reus, & Lamont, 2009) or on managerial
commitment (Klendauer & Deller, 2009). Other studies have investigated how subdimensions of justice are mediated by a latent variable for overall justice that affects
commitment (e.g., Ambrose & Schminke, 2009; Jones & Martens, 2009; Marzucco,
Marique, Stinglhamber, De Roeck, & Hansez, 2014). In fact, the discussion of andresearch on an overall justice construct represents a paradigm shift in justice research,which had once focused primarily on justice’s sub-dimensions (Ambrose & Schminke,2009). The inclusion of such a global construct is advantageous since it empowers
researchers to measure the impact of justice as a single antecedent on individual
psychological constructs (e.g., commitment, job satisfaction). One way of
implementation is to operationalize it as a higher order construct (HOC), where we see
three primary advantages: First, as Colquitt and Shaw (2005) state, the approach isparticularly appealing in reactive field studies with multiple events or an entity context,3

such as ours. Second, other merger research finds that sub-dimensions have a relatively
low explanatory power on overall justice (e.g., 𝑅𝑅 2 =.33 in Ambrose & Schminke, 2009).
Since overall justice captures all of justice’s sub-dimensions, we expect a higher

explained variance, so we infer that the current state of measurement of overall justice isinsufficient for our research objective. Third, we see additional value in incorporating
overall justice as a formatively modeled HOC. In the past, researchers have focused onmodeling overall justice reflectively as a second-order construct (e.g., Judge & Colquitt,2004), neglecting the fact that the sub-dimensions “form” overall justice (MacKenzie,
Podsakoff, & Jarvis, 2005) and not the other way around. By incorporating justice as a
HOC in our research, we can gauge the importance of each sub-dimension’s importancein the formation of organizational justice.
Thus, our research is innovative in (i) focusing on employees’ AMC, as we focus
not only on commitment to the new firm, as Klendauer and Deller (2009) do, but to thecommitment of the merger process itself from the employees’ point of view. The
research is also innovative in (ii) separating organizational justice into the three most
relevant sub-dimensions for affective merger commitment (AMC) and applying
structural equation modeling to model organizational justice formatively as a HOC.
Innovation is also offered in (iii) comparing the perceptions of two intuitively distinct
but rarely separately studied groups: the bidder-firm employees and the target-firm
employees. Seo and Hill (2005) and Viegas‐Pires (2013) also point to the importance ofthe dynamic nature of integration processes, so we innovate in (iv) including
observations made at three times following the post-merger integration process:
immediately after the deal is made, six months later, and about six month after that.
Furthermore, (v) there is still a need for an extension of empirical studies using
quantitative methods, since the majority of research on the impact of humans onmergers relies on qualitative approaches (e.g., case studies) (Mirc, 2014), perhaps
4because of the significant barriers from the corporate side to let researchers participate
in an acquisition process.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, we build our researchon the organizational justice theory, which has its origins in Adams’ equity theory(1963; 1965). We then define the sub-dimensions of organizational justice and AMC
and develop some testable hypotheses. Next, we analyze our data by using partial leastsquares structural equation modeling, which has seen significant growth in social
science research recently (e.g., Hair, Sarstedt, Pieper, & Ringle, 2012). Finally, we
discuss our results, highlight our recommendations for researchers and practitioners andenumerate our study’s limitations.
2. Theory Development and Hypotheses
Researchers define justice (or fairness) based on whether an action or decision ismorally right and promotes equality between group members. In business research,organizational justice theory integrates justice into the context of a corporate work
environment, focusing on the employees’ assessment of their surroundings. Specifically,
it provides conceptual insights into employees’ psychological behaviors in response to
managerial decisions. Past research has shown that organizational justice is anantecedent of outcome-related psychological factors like job satisfaction andorganizational commitment (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001).
The concept of organizational justice originated in the equity theory developed byAdams (1963; 1965), who investigated what we refer to as distributional justice, where
one’s evaluation of fairness stems from a subjective comparison of inputs against
outcomes. In this logic, input refers to what a person perceives that he or she contributes,
such as knowledge or effort, and outcome is what individuals receive in exchange, suchas pay or recognition. In general, people first evaluate what they invest and what theyreceived as compensation. Following this initial “calculation,” they compare their value
5

against that of others (e.g., members of their peer group). In response, they may alter
their employee’s behavior in the workplace and perhaps their job motivation ororganizational commitment. Adams’ theoretical framework for justice perceptions inlegal entities has been studied extensively over the last half century, and researchers
have explored alternative sub-dimensions of organizational justice (Colquitt, Conlon,
Wesson, Porter, & Ng, 2001). Today, the consensus is that organizational justiceconsists of: (a) distributive justice, which is the original concept of organizational
justice that deals with fairness of outcomes, such as pay, rewards, and promotions; (b)procedural justice, which is concerned with procedures, such as whether employees
have a say in and are involved in the processes (Thibaut & Walker, 1975); and (c)interactional justice, which deals with the general treatment of organizational members,
such as being treated with dignity by the new management (Colquitt, Greenberg, &Zapata-Phelan, 2005). Colquitt (2001) also finds evidence that researchers should split
interactional justice into two dimensions: interpersonal justice, which refers to thegeneral treatment of people, and (d) informational justice, which refers to how
important members of organizations value adequate and timely information. Especiallyduring the post-integration period of a merger, it is particularly important to have theemployees’ support not only for the new firm but also for the merger process itself.
Theory on what drives employees’ commitment to a merger is scarce (e.g., Chawla &Kelloway, 2004; Rafferty & Restubog, 2009) but should answer the question
concerning what an employee needs in order to argue in favor of the merger. A suitable
construct for the “merger commitment” can be deduced from previous work onorganizational commitment, a widely studied construct popular in human resource
management research (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979), but merger commitment must
be distinguished from organizational commitment in that it should not capture thecommitment to the (new) organization but to the merger process itself. In other words,
6

merger commitment is a commitment to change rather than a commitment to an entity
or institution. In this regard, Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) suggest an adaption of theoriginal three-component model for organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen,1991)—which consists of the three sub-dimensions: affective commitment, continuancecommitment, and normative commitment—to organizational change processes.
Following this logic, merger processes can be seen as special cases of organizationalchange processes. Researchers have found affective commitment to be the key subdimension of organizational commitment and have focused on it in their research (Purba
et al., 2015; Buitendach & Witte, 2005; Rafferty & Restubog, 2009). Similar
approaches have been observed in research on affective commitment during mergers(e.g., Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). In the organizational change context, Herscovitch
and Meyer (2002, p. 475) define affective commitment as “a desire to provide support
for a change based on a belief in its inherent benefits,” which is essentially the constructthat we are interested in and that we want to adapt to a merger context. Therefore, wedevelop the construct affective merger commitment (AMC), which is operationalizedwith three items (Table 2).
We see the organizational justice construct as a valuable explanatory factor thatdrives employees’ AMC. Specifically, we seek to clarify how the effect oforganizational justice on AMC changes as the acquisition process advances. Based on
the idea that the sub-dimensions of justice have more or less importance during thecourse of a merger, we can assume that organizational justice’s impact on employees’
AMC varies as time passes. Thus, the relationship between these two constructs is notstatic but is a dynamic process in which employees’ needs change over time according
to changing psychological needs (Seo & Hill, 2005). Therefore, we are interested in theemployees’ perceptions at the informational, interpersonal, and procedural justice levelsof how they are treated by the management. However, we do not investigate distributive
7

justice, over which we assume the new management has only limited control. For
example, whether there are income differences between employees of the target firm
and the bidder firm may not be directly attributable to the new management because, ina cross-border deal, the management in the target firm’s country takes the leading role(and the responsibility in case of a failure), but the headquarters may decide on
distributive criteria like salary adjustments. Furthermore, employees from the target
firm may not automatically receive the work conditions of the bidder firm but may
continue with their existing conditions. To unveil differences between these two
employee groups, we also perform an analysis on heterogeneity between bidder
employees’ and target employees’ perceptions.
Employees should value informational justice more at the beginning of theacquisition than later (Citera & Rentsch, 1993) because the beginning is when
uncertainty is highest and employees are likely to want sufficient and timely
information (Ellis et al., 2009). Both groups of employees—those from the target firm
and those from the bidder firm—should value receiving timely, precise, and thoroughinformation. With the perception that they have received such information, their AMC
should be high. Procedural justice should also have a high value at the beginning of an
acquisition because employees on both sides of the acquisition want to know about theirpositions at the new firm before they can have AMC (Ellis et al., 2009). In contrast,
interpersonal justice should matter at a later stage. Fair treatment is an important part ofgaining employees’ commitment, as Jones and Martens (2009), who investigate
employees’ perceptions four years after the merger, find. From these observations, we
deduce the three major parts of hypotheses that guide our study:8

Hypothesis H1: Employees’ perceptions of organizational justice correlate positively to their
AMC.
Hypothesis H2: Sub-dimensions of justice change over time in its importance to affect AMC.
Hypothesis H2.1: Procedural justice affects AMC positively more right after the acquisition
than later.
Hypothesis H2.2: Informational justice affects AMC positively more right after theacquisition than later.
Hypothesis H2.3: Interpersonal justice affects AMC more at a later stage than at an earlier
stage.
Hypothesis H3.1: Employees from the bidder firm seek more informational justice at the
beginning of the acquisition than later.
Hypothesis H3.2: Employees from the target firm seek more procedural justice at the
beginning of the acquisition than later.

The structural model we propose is presented in Figure 1, with organizational justicemodeled as a HOC and time as a moderating variable.

Figure 1: Structural model with organizational justice as a HOC

9

In the following sections we will test our research hypotheses in an empirical study in across-border setting.
3. Empirical Analysis
3.1. Construct Measures
We operationalize organizational justice as a HOC and follow prior studies in analyzing
its corresponding sub-dimensions. A HOC is a latent variable that consists of several
sub-dimensions (Becker, Klein, & Wetzels, 2012). For organizational justice these subdimensions are informational justice, interpersonal justice, and procedural justice. Each
sub-dimension is operationalized by four reflectively measured items. We use a fivepoint Likert scale based on Colquitt (2001) for the items since they have a fair level of
discriminant validity and are theoretically sound (Table 2). We operationalize AMC
with a reflective three-item, five-point Likert scale for affective commitment toorganizational change, adapted from Herscovitch and Meyer (2002). Herscovitch andMeyer derive their measurement models from Meyer and Allen (1991), who develop athree-component model of organizational commitment that contains affective,
continuance, and normative commitment. The measurement of organizational
commitment in human resource management has a long history (e.g., Mowday et al.,1979), from which researchers have discovered that affective commitment is suggested
to predict performance better than the other dimensions do (Allen & Meyer, 1996;
Meyer et al., 2002). Therefore, social scientists have focused on affective commitmentin the single-entity context (e.g., Buitendach & Witte, 2005) as well as in the merger
context (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). We follow that research stream in transferring
affective commitment to the post-integration process of M&A and call it AMC, which
we measure with an adapted version of the affective commitment to change scale from
Herscovitch and Meyer (2002) (Table 2).

103.2. Sample
In the sample used throughout the present study, the bidder, a Japan-based German
subsidiary in the technical testing device industry, is knowledgeable about the hostcountry, Japan, and enjoys a high degree of autonomy from its German headquarters.
The leading executive manager of the Japan-based German subsidiary, who became theleading manager at the new firm, is not only German but has also been living in Japanfor many years and speaks fluent Japanese. Several other managers at the German
subsidiary are also non-Japanese but are equipped with considerable knowledge about
Japan. Even the Japanese managers at the German bidder firm have worked at thesubsidiary, often for many years, and they have been influenced to a high degree by theGerman culture. In short, this sample has realistic characteristics because of the bidder’slevel of knowledge about the target country. Thus, our research design is realistic
because of the increase in cross-border bidders’ knowledge about markets in which they
have already operated for a long time. As the number of cross-border M&As has been
increasing for many years, our sample provides a realistic scenario of a bidder firm thatis familiar with the target country.
We administered the survey in three rounds (𝑡𝑡1 , 𝑡𝑡2 , 𝑡𝑡3 ) in English and in Japanese.

The Japanese version was back-translated by two professionals, and all items withtranslation irregularities were discussed and adjusted accordingly. The top managementof the newly established Germany-based company in Japan distributed a link to theinternet-based questionnaire among bidder and target employees. We conducted the firstsurvey round (𝑡𝑡1 ) in July 2012, shortly after the official announcement of theacquisition. A second round (𝑡𝑡2 ) of distribution took place almost half a year later, in

December 2012. At that time some strategic changes were implemented at the target

firm when some of the business moved to the bidder firm and other parts of the businessmoved to the target firm. For example, one new machine purchased for testing bigger
11

devices was not placed at the bidder firm, but at the previous target firm. Some otherproduct lines for testing devices were also moved in order to realize synergies not only
to the bidder firm but also to the target firm. The third round ( 𝑡𝑡3 ) of the survey wascollected in August 2013, about a year after the transaction took place. Before eachsurvey round, the leader of the German subsidiary and the previous owner of theJapanese target firm personally reminded both groups of employees to participate in thesurvey. We also sent reminders to all employees.
At (𝑡𝑡1 ), we collected 52 usable respondents for this research study from apotential total of 72 target employees and 34 responses from about 120 bidder

employees. Follow-up interviews conducted by the first author revealed that theprevious Japanese owner, whom the Japanese target employees still highly respected,
had personally requested that the employees participate at the survey. At (𝑡𝑡2 ), wecollected 59 responses from the target employees and 38 from the bidder employees,
while at ( 𝑡𝑡3 ), we received 57 responses from the target and 49 from the bidder. Followup interviews revealed that the German top manager had requested, especially at (𝑡𝑡3 ),that the (bidder firm) employees participate with all efforts in order to have meaningful
results and reveal how they perceived the acquisition.

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Table 1: Sample description
Targ
Targ Overa
Age category BidderTargetOverall
Firm-years Bidderet
Overall
GenderBidderetllround 1 (t1)34
52
86round 1 (t1)34
52
86 round 1 (t1)34
52
86
under 17
5
12
< 30 years
2
15
17
male
20
44
64
under 51392231-40 years
14
18
32
female11718
under 108
16
24
41-50 years
13
1730
missing3
1
4
under 15411
1551-60 years
32
5
over 16
0
11
11
missing2
02
missing2
02round 2(t2)385997round 2 (t2)3859
97 round 2 (t2)3859
97
under 16
4
10
< 30 years
1
18
19
male
19
47
66
under 516
10
26
31-40 years
14
21
35
female141226
under 1072330
41-50 years
16
18
34
missing5
5under 15312
1551-60 years
32
5
over 161
10
11
missing4
0
4
missing
5
0
5round 3 (t3)
49
57
106
round 3 (t3)49
57
106 round 3 (t3)
49
57
106
under 19514< 30 years
2
19
21
male
26
46
72
under 51912
31
31-40 years
22
19
41
female20
1030
under 1012
16
28
41-50 years
18
17
35
missing3
1
4
under 155
11
16
51-60 years
42
6
over 161
13
14> 61 years
1
01
missing3
03
missing202Notes: Three rounds of questionnaire results, divided in firm years, age and gender

3.3. Estimation Procedure
For the estimation procedure, we used partial least squares structural equation modeling(PLS-SEM; Hair, Sarstedt, Ringle, & Mena, 2012) and SmartPLS 3 (Ringle, Wende, &Becker, 2015). PLS-SEM (Wold, 1973) has recently gained attention in social science
research in disciplines like strategic management (Hair et al., 2012; Hulland, 1999) andmarketing research (Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2011b; Henseler, Ringle, & Sinkovics,2009). Unlike its counterpart CB-SEM (Jöreskog, 1982), PLS is advantageous in
exploratory research situations where only a little is known about the relationshipbetween the underlying variables (Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2011a, p. 14). It can also be
used to estimate HOCs like organizational justice formatively (e.g., Wilson, 2010), and
it is the preferable multivariate analysis method with sample sizes smaller than 250
observations (Chin & Newsted, 1999; Reinartz, Haenlein, & Henseler, 2009). Therefore,
PLS-SEM is the preferable research method in our setting. In order to estimate the HOCof organizational justice, we followed existing guidelines (Becker et al., 2012) and13

estimated the model using PLS Mode B since this procedure has been shown to recover
the real parameter values most effectively. Modeling HOC like organizational justicewith structural equation modeling is a novel approach that has gained recent attention(e.g., Cheung, 2008). Specifically, by implementing the lower-order constructs (LOCs)
into the model, we can gauge the sub-dimensions’ partial impact on organizational
justice and evaluate whether the relationship between organizational justice and AMCchanges over time or remains stable. Finally, to test our model for significant
differences between bidder and target employees, we applied a multi-group analysis(MGA) approach (PLS-MGA; Keil et al., 2000).

4. Results
4.1. Overall Model Results
We first evaluated the overall model with regard to the generally recommended quality
criteria for PLS-SEM. As suggested in the literature (e.g., Hair, Hult, Ringle, & Sarstedt,2014), we started by evaluating the measurement models for the overall sample ofbidder and target employees (Table 5). All constructs were measured reflectively, andthe loadings are well above the threshold of .7. We also have a high level of internalconsistency since the composite reliability (CR) and Cronbach’s α are well above .7 forall exogenous and endogenous constructs. Finally, for all points in time, the averagevariance extracted (AVE) for all constructs is above the threshold of .5, indicating thateach construct explains at least 50 percent of its indicator variance. The Fornell-Larcker
criterion (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) is satisfied since the square root of the AVE of allreflectively measured latent variables is larger than the correlation with other latent

14

variables 1. Therefore, discriminant validity is established and all constructs measuredifferent phenomena.
In evaluating the HOC of organizational justice, we followed Becker et al.,(2012) and treated the path coefficients of the LOCs as weights. Investigating therelationship of the LOCs with the HOC showed no multi-collinearity issues since thevariance inflation factor (VIF) is well below the critical value of 5. Thus, we caninterpret the path coefficients in order to validate our research hypotheses. We confirm
previous research results with H1 that a higher justice on average leads to a better AMC(Marzucco et al., 2014; Table 4).
Next, we assess the explained variance of the model, the paths evaluation in the
structural model, and their predictive relevance (Table 4). Overall, we find that ourmodel can explain a fair amount of variance in the target construct, AMC, with thehighest 𝑅𝑅 2 at .37. The model results also indicate that the relationship between

organizational justice and AMC is stable over time, with path-coefficients ranging
from .53 to .61. Therefore, we conclude that the importance of organizational justiceremains comparatively stable over time. We generate substantial 𝑄𝑄 2 values well

above .2, showing the model’s applicability for prediction. Therefore, our model works
well with the given sample and can also be justified for use when performing out-ofsample calculations, making it especially useful for prediction in practical applications.
We also find differences in the importance of all LOCs over time, which
supports hypothesis H2 that the justice sub-dimensions affect AMC differently. As
shown in Table 3, starting with 𝑡𝑡1 , we find evidence that at the first round procedural
justice, with a path-coefficient of .85, is the most important factor in employees’

perceiving organizational justice. This result is also clearly supported by the 𝑓𝑓 2 value of
18.51, which indicates the importance of each exogenous construct in explaining
1

Correlation matrices are provided by the authors upon request.
15

variance in organizational justice. Over time, however, the strength of procedural justicediminishes such that it is no longer significant in 𝑡𝑡3 . Thus, higher procedural justiceaffects AMC more right after the acquisition than later, which supports our hypothesis
H2.1. In contrast, informational justice and interpersonal justice have no significanceand had low 𝑓𝑓 2 values in the first round (t1). However, the importance of informational

justice increases over time, from .26 in 𝑡𝑡1 to .47 in 𝑡𝑡2 and .64 in 𝑡𝑡3 , where the last two

observations are significant, not supporting hypothesis H2.2. Across all three estimatedrounds (t1 to t3) interpersonal justice has the lowest impact of all LOCs, in t2 evenshowing a negative path coefficient, thus, not confirming hypothesis H2.3.

4.2. Multi-Group Analysis (MGA)
After showing that the model meets the required quality criteria, we analyze howorganizational justice correlates to AMC and analyze the heterogeneity of bidder andtarget employees in an a priori segmentation. The results of the MGA are presented inTable 6 and Table 7. We proceeded as follows: Unless for t1 the path coefficients forboth groups are simultaneously (non-) significant, we can neglect the parametric test forgroup differences (Keil et al., 2000). In the remaining cases, we reveal groupdifferences by means of ordinary F-tests.
Our findings show that organizational justice strongly correlates with AMC andthat it continues to do so even a year after the acquisition. We investigate three rounds(𝑡𝑡1 , 𝑡𝑡2 , 𝑡𝑡3 ) for heterogeneity. Shortly after the public announcement in 𝑡𝑡1 , we find that
informational justice is critically important for the bidder employees to show AMC,

with a path-coefficient of .87, whereas procedural justice is not significant (Table 6).
Thus, bidder employees value informational justice highly at the first and the thirdsurvey round, supporting our hypothesis H3.1.

16

In contrast, the target employees at 𝑡𝑡1 seek procedural justice, revealed in a pathcoefficient of 1.21, while at the same time the role of informational justice is negligible.
In 𝑡𝑡2 procedural justice is significant for target employees until its effect vanishes in 𝑡𝑡3 .

Therefore, in t2 procedural justice remains important for target employees, supporting

mainly hypothesis H3.2. The role of informational justice shows changing importancedepending on the phase.
The effect of interpersonal justice is generally not significant; its estimatedeffects may even change directions, indicating that interpersonal justice is the weakest
and most volatile of the LOCs.

4. Discussion and Conclusions
The goal of this study is to determine how employees’ justice perceptions affect their
AMC immediately after acquisition announcement had taken place until about one year
later. Based on the equity theory and on the construct of AMC during change processes,
we developed hypotheses and incorporated them into a dynamic process by linking
constructs like justice and AMC over time. We tested our hypotheses against the datafrom three survey rounds (t1 to t3) conducted during the acquisition of a Japanesecompany by a German subsidiary in Japan. Our results suggest that organizational
justice and its three sub-dimensions link positively to the employees’ AMC,
accompanied by a high level of explained variance, suggesting that, during a merger,
employees will show support for the merger if they are treated fairly. The importance ofjustice in the sense of a HOC remained constant for all survey rounds, indicating that
there is always a relatively stable psychological demand for organizational justiceamong employees, even in later phases of the acquisition. This result is important, as itemphasizes that the need for organizational justice does not diminish as the postintegration process ages.
17

Furthermore, an observable shift in the justice sub-dimensions occurs as time
passes. The importance of procedural justice for the new firm (with all employees
involved) is highest at the beginning of an acquisition and decreases over time. Shortly
after an acquisition, employees focus on procedural matters (Ellis et al., 2009), while
the importance of procedural justice diminishes after the acquisition, replaced byinformational justice, which becomes gradually more important in later stages of theacquisition. Thus, while employees are initially interested in their new roles, when theirpersonal job security is a central concern, their focus shifts over time to the need fortransparent communication from management. Interpersonal justice shows only one
significant and unexpectedly negative effect on AMC roughly six months after theacquisition.
In an effort to reveal the reasons behind the negative effect of interpersonal
justice and to test our hypotheses further, we conducted a post-hoc analysis, which
revealed heterogeneity between bidder and target employees. The post-hoc analysis
showed that bidder employees pay more attention to informational justice (adequate andtimely information process) in t1 than at a later stage. A reason might be that bidder
employees tend to be initially rather curios about the development of the new firm thanafraid of losing their jobs.
The post-hoc analysis showed that target employees pay more attention toprocedural justice (a clear and fair decision-making process) in t1 than at a later stage, as
target employees tend to be initially more afraid of losing their status, their routines, andeven their jobs. Put differently, since bidder employees’ jobs are usually safer, whichleads to a better bargaining-position shortly after the acquisition announcement, they are
at first more interested in clear-cut and precise communication about what is happening(informational justice). Procedural justice becomes also for bidder employees importantin t2, when bidder employees seek procedural justice. In t2, when the firms’ processes
18

have begun to merge and the bidder employees’ work environment has begun to change,
there might have been a stronger demand for procedural justice on the bidder side as
well, as during that time some target employees’ work location changed to the bidder
firm, and the product lines for testing devices were partially combined. As for thenegative path-coefficient of interpersonal justice in the overall model, we find theunderlying reason on the target side in t2, for which we uncover a negative relationship,
followed by a positive path in round t3. We conclude that there is no clear relationshipbetween interpersonal justice and AMC in our study. There might be an unobserved
moderating variable—a situational factor—that determines whether interpersonal justice
has a positive or a negative effect on the AMC.
Our paper contributes to both academics and practitioners. Our academic
contribution is to support equity theory by showing that employees who perceive thepresence of justice during and after a merger have a higher AMC. Finding a link
between meeting the basic need for security in a fair manner and AMC builds on theequity theory of fair treatment (Adams, 1963; 1965). Our findings suggest that theequity theory is applicable also in our sample case of a cross border M&A in theJapanese context. Taken together, the findings provide support that the impact of the
sub-dimensions of justice changes as the post-integration period ages. We also extend
equity theory by providing a theory-driven account of perceptions’ instability over time,so they need to be adjusted as the post-integration ages. We also show that there aredifferences between bidder and target employees’ perceptions, which can also be
explained by this theoretical lens; employees do not just want to be treated fairly, but
the kind of fairness they expect depends on whether they are from the target or thebidder side. The bidder employees value being informed, while target employees ask forprocess-related fairness.

19

Our practical contribution is to show that employees measure their inputs against
their outcomes. Employees who perceive that they are receiving fair treatment have ahigher AMC. However, each of the sub-dimensions of justice affects employees’ AMC
differently. Based on our findings, politeness and respect from management is a weakfactor in explaining, encouraging, and systematically developing employees’ AMC tothe merger process, as employees’ expectations about management’s behavior during
and after a merger both differ and fluctuate. Interpersonal justice has less effect thanprocedural or informational justice, which requires more attention from management.
Turning to the limitations of our study, our empirical sample in a few cases hasless than forty observations. Based on the rule of ten (Hair et al., 2014), an empiricalsample should at least have ten times the number of observations than the maximum
number of indicators or paths pointing at a particular construct. Since we used areflective model that had a substantial Cronbach’s α for every operationalized construct,
there was no need; however, to remove indicators in order to meet the sample size
requirements. Even given this limitation, we assume that our model is well-balanced in
the given context.
A second limitation is related to the measures in this study, all of which werecollected through self-reported surveys, increasing the risk of common method bias
(Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2012). Third, we investigated a cross-borderacquisition with a Japanese target firm, and we cannot assume that employees fromother countries behave as Japanese employees do. For example, US employees may be
more likely to leave the firm earlier than their Japanese counterparts would do after
acquisition or their justice-related expectations may be higher. Hence, future researchshould analyze bidder and target employees separately using a more observations todeal with heterogeneity. Failure to do so might ultimately be a factor in themisinterpretation of empirical findings. We would also like to see longitudinal studies
20

like that requested by Cartwright and Schoenberg (2006), which was not possible
because the top management was not in favor of it. By conducting longitudinal studies,
researchers would be able to control for the presence of underlying moderators, such as
those we assume are affecting interpersonal justice.
This research, based on real-world data about a cross-border acquisition, offers
new findings about employees’ perceptions of justice into the post-merger integration
discussion. Its findings can help to increase the success rate of cross-border M&A byhelping managers meet the significant employee-related challenges of post-merger
integrations.

21

Table 2: Measurement models

Affective merger
Interpersonal
Procedural justice
Informational justicecommitment
justice

LatentVariable

Indicator

Reflective Measures

SourceThe management…
… explains its decisions thoroughly(Bies & Moag, 1986)

IJ1
IJ2

… reasonably explains its decisions(Bies & Moag, 1986)… seems to tailor its communications to your specific needs(Shapiro, Buttner, &Barry, 1994)

IJ4… communicates details in a timely manner(Shapiro et al., 1994)

INJ1
INJ2

… treats you politely(Bies & Moag, 1986)… treats you with dignity(Bies & Moag, 1986)

INJ3… treats you with respect(Bies & Moag, 1986)

INJ4… refrains from improper remarks or comments(Bies & Moag, 1986)

PJ1

The decision-making process has been applied consistently.

(Leventhal, 1980)

PJ2

The decision-making processes has been free of bias.

(Leventhal, 1980)

PJ3

The decisions have been based on accurate information.

(Leventhal, 1980)

PJ4

The decision-making process has upheld ethical and moral
standards.

(Leventhal, 1980)

AMC1

I believe in the value of this affiliation.

(Herscovitch &Meyer, 2002)

AMC2

This affiliation is a good strategy for my organization.

(Herscovitch &Meyer, 2002)

AMC3

This affiliation serves an important purpose.

(Herscovitch &Meyer, 2002)

IJ3

Notes: Items for organizational justice are taken from Colquitt (2001), but the table displays the original authors of the items.

Table 3: Quality criteria for the higher-order construct
𝒕𝒕𝟏𝟏

Organizational justice

HOC

LOC

Pathf2
Coefficient

VIF

𝒕𝒕𝟐𝟐

Pathf2
Coefficient

VIF

𝒕𝒕𝟑𝟑

Pathf2
Coefficient

VIF

Informational
justice.26

2.29 1.75.47***

8.07 2.17.64***

9.79

2.13

Interpersonal
justice-.07

0.15 1.76-.46***

8.24 2.05

.21

1.02

2.11

Procedural
justice.85***

18.51 2.33

.89***

23.48 2.64

.25

1.11

2.91

Notes: Bootstrapping results are marked with asterisks according to the significance level (i.e., 1,000 subsamples; no signchange option).
*** Significant at 1%

Table 4: Structural model, explained variance, and predictive relevance
𝒕𝒕𝟏𝟏
𝒕𝒕𝟐𝟐
TargetConstruct OJAMC 𝑸𝑸𝟐𝟐
OJAMC 𝑸𝑸𝟐𝟐
𝑹𝑹𝟐𝟐
𝑹𝑹𝟐𝟐
Affective
merger.53***
commitment

.21

.29

.61***.28.37

OJAMC.57***

𝒕𝒕𝟑𝟑

𝑸𝑸𝟐𝟐

.23

𝑹𝑹𝟐𝟐

.33

Notes: Bootstrapping results are marked with asterisks according to the significance level (i.e., 1,000 subsamples; no signchange option).
*** Significant at 1%

22

Table 5: Quality criteria for the measurement models

Construct

Informational
justice

Interpersonal
justice

Procedural
justice

Affective
mergercommitment

Indicator

Loading CR

𝒕𝒕𝟏𝟏

CronFornellAVE
bach’s α
Larcker

Loading CR

𝒕𝒕𝟐𝟐

CronFornellAVE
bach’s α
Larcker

0.94***

0.89***

IJ2

0.83***

IJ3

0.88***

IJ4

0.84***

0.92***

0.91***

INJ1

0.95***

0.95***

0.95***

INJ2

0.94***

INJ3

0.92***

INJ4

0.80***

0.81***

0.86***

PJ1

0.80***

0.88***

0.88***

PJ2

0.89***

PJ3

0.89**

PJ4

0.83***

0.80***

0.91***

AMC1

0.94***

0.96***

0.92***

AMC2

0.94***

0.92 0.88

0.95 0.92

0.91 0.87

0.95 0.91

0.74

0.82

0.73

0.85









0.92***
0.92***

0.96***
0.94***

0.87***
0.89***

0.94***

AVE

FornellLarcker

0.95 0.93

0.84



0.96 0.95

0.87



0.95 0.93

0.83



0.92 0.88

0.80



Loading CR

IJ1

𝒕𝒕𝟑𝟑

Cronbach’s α

0.91***
0.96 0.94

0.96 0.94

0.92 0.88

0.94 0.90

0.85

0.84

0.74

0.84









0.93***
0.90***

0.96***
0.95***

0.92***
0.93***

0.94***

AMC3
0.88***
0.84***
0.83***
Notes: Bootstrapping results (i.e., 1,000 subsamples; no sign change option) are marked with asterisks according to the significance level.
*** Significant at 1%

23

Table 6: Multi-group analysis of the higher-order construct
𝒕𝒕𝟏𝟏
Construct

Lower-Order
Construct

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value P-Value
BidderTarget

𝒕𝒕𝟐𝟐

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value P-Value
BidderTarget

𝒕𝒕𝟑𝟑

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value P-Value
BidderTargetOrganizational
justice

Informational
.87**
-0.36
2.26
.03
0.35
.86**
.72
.47
.73**
.44
0.60
.55
justice
Interpersonal
.24
-0.11
0.70
.49
-0.50
-.64
.14
.89
.10
.69**
1.27
.21
justice
Procedural-.08
1.21***
2.28.03
1.01***
.61**
.52
.60
.21
.02
0.38
.70
justice
Notes: Bootstrapping results (i.e., 200 subsamples; no sign change option) are marked with asterisks according to the significance level. A significant P-Value indicates that groupdifferences are present at the corresponding level.
*** Significant at 1%** Significant at 5%
Table 7: Multi-group analysis of the target construct (OJAMC)
𝒕𝒕𝟏𝟏
Construct

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value
BidderTargetP-Value

𝒕𝒕𝟐𝟐

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value
BidderTargetP-Value

𝒕𝒕𝟑𝟑

Path
Path
Coefficient Coefficient T-Value
BidderTargetAffective
merger.53***.55***.05.96.62***
.31**
1.12
.26
.60***
commitment
Notes: Bootstrapping results (i.e., 200 subsamples; no sign change option) are marked with asterisks according to the significance level.
*** Significant at 1%** Significant at 5%.48***.87

P-Value.39

24

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