In this way, a business network is dynamic ( Ritter and Ford, 2004 Mattsson and Johanson, 2006) and the different actors adapt mutually to each other’s activities ( Anderson et al., 1994 Håkansson and Snehota, 1989). Business relationships are not static, they develop over time ( Hadjikhani and LaPlaca, 2013) and companies react to changes and adapt as a consequence ( Harrison et al., 2010 Håkansson and Snehota, 1989). From a business network perspective, companies are interconnected through business relationships and interactions ( Ford and Håkansson, 2006). However, when companies acquire other companies, only the two involved companies seem to be in focus. In this study, we assume that synergy may emerge, intended or not intended because of an acquisition. Being an important measure of the expected outcome of acquisitions ( Larsson and Finkelstein, 1999), there seems to be a difference between intentions and realisations ( Zollo and Meier, 2008), which makes acquisition planning important ( Epstein, 2005). In the literature, the realisation of synergy appears complicated and not easily achieved ( Garzella and Fiorentino, 2014 Zaheer et al., 2013 Zollo and Meier, 2008) often due to integration problems ( Teerikangas and Thanos, 2018 Cartwright et al., 2012 Mirc, 2012), differences in organisational culture ( Stahl and Voigt, 2008) or difficulties in presenting positive financial performance ( King et al., 2004). Intended synergy is more commonly described than achieved synergy because synergy is not only difficult to attain ( Zaheer et al., 2013 Goold and Campbell, 1998 Porter, 1987) but also to identify and measure ( Garzella and Fiorentino, 2014 Zaheer et al., 2013 Goold and Campbell, 2000). The broadly used concept ( Campbell and Sommers Luchs, 1998) lacks a common definition besides the general “two plus two equals five” ( Garzella and Fiorentino, 2014 Sirower, 1997 Porter, 1987 Carter, 1977). Synergy is frequently used to legitimise acquisitions ( Mukherjee et al., 2004 Seth et al., 2000 Trautwein, 1990 Porter, 1987) in various types of industries, for example, Mylan’s acquisition of Meda ( Mylan, 2016) in the pharmaceutical industry, Pernod Ricard’s acquisition of Vin and Sprit ( Pernod, 2008) in the food industry, AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner ( AT&T, 2016) in the communications industry and Volkswagen’s acquisition of Scania ( Volkswagen, 2014) in the manufacturing industry. The full terms of this licence may be seen at Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Copyright © 2021, Johan Holtström and Helén Anderson.
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