The intertextual production of international relations in mergers and acquisitions

Riad, S. and Vaara, E. and Zhang, N. (2012) The intertextual production of international relations in mergers and acquisitions. Organization Studies, 33 (1). pp. 121-148. ISSN 0170-8406

Abstract

While studies on international management have focused on cultural differences and examined institutional specificities in various national business systems, conceptions of international relations have been left relatively underexplored. We argue that representations of international relations are relevant to international M&As and contend that intertextuality offers a novel approach to examine these relational features of international management. Our analysis focuses on Sino–US relations in the context of the acquisition of American IBM’s Personal Computer Division (PCD) by the Chinese company, Lenovo. We demonstrate the ways in which facets of international relations are produced in media accounts of this acquisition, and analyse the intertextual dynamics entwined with their production. The analysis consists of three sections: constitutive intertextuality, manifest intertextuality and intertextual ideological undercurrents. These illustrate the variation in producing international relations through discursive themes (threat to security/peaceful rise), emotion rhetoric (fear/cheer) and ideology (cold war/globalism). In summary, the paper elucidates the ways in which international M&As are immersed in a seascape of intertextual international relations.