CORPORATE-MERGERS AND THE PROBLEMS OF IS INTEGRATION

The process of integrating information systems (IS) during corporate m ergers can be critical to their success: Factors that can support or i mpede the successful integration of IS include organizational and IS a ttributes, organizational merger management and IS integration activit ies. This study develops a conceptual framework for measuring IS integ ration success and identifies the factors influencing it. A field surv ey investigates the relationship between these factors and success. Ac cording to the results of our field survey of CIOs, prior merger exper ience, IS participation in merger planning, the quality of merger plan ning, the criteria used for setting IS integration priorities, and a h igh level of data sharing across applications appear to have a positiv e influence on the success of the IS integration. When changes that di rectly affect personnel have a significant impact, that impact seems t o be mostly negative. Programming language incompatibilities also have a negative impact on IS integration success.