Employee Profile

Helene Loe Colman

Professor - Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Room number C3Y-075
Phone +4746410462
E-mail helene.l.colman@bi.no

Area of Expertise

Publications

Scientific publications Other

Colman, Helene Loe; Rouzies, Audrey & Lunnan, Randi (2023)

Social integration in subsidiary-building acquisitions

Journal of International Business Studies, 54, s. 1712- 1722. Doi: 10.1057/s41267-023-00633-y

We identify and conceptualize the phenomenon of subsidiary-building acquisitions. International acquisitions provide a powerful means for multinational corporations (MNCs) to grow their existing subsidiaries. The integration of subsidiary-building acquisitions involves a triad of actors: the MNC, the existing subsidiary, and the target. However, extant research emphasizes international acquisitions as a cross-border phenomenon, focusing in a limited way on the foreign acquirer–local target dyad, thus ignoring the complexities of subsidiary-building acquisitions. Through a qualitative study of a Norwegian target acquired by a French MNC with an existing Norwegian subsidiary, we find that subsidiary-building acquisitions involve tensions between autonomy and integration in two distinct and interrelated integration processes: local integration and cross-border integration. We uncover how pressures for autonomy in one process counter-intuitively trigger pressures for integration in the other. These dynamics fuel headquarters–subsidiary relationships and subsidiary cohesion, the two components of social integration in subsidiary-building acquisitions. By unearthing the underexplored phenomenon of subsidiary-building acquisitions, we provide novel insights into the complexities of international acquisitions. We bridge the merger and acquisition (M&A) and MNC literatures, thus paving the way for research on international acquisitions to move beyond the acquirer–target dyad to understand their implications for MNCs.

Stensaker, Inger G.; Colman, Helene Loe & Grøgaard, Birgitte (2023)

The dynamics of union-management collaboration during postmerger integration

Long Range Planning Doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2023.102326

Collaboration between unions and management may facilitate postmerger integration, however collaboration can also be time-consuming and challenging. Using a qualitative case study, we examined union–management collaboration in the integration of two Norwegian firms. The integration was split into two processes, involving different business units. While both processes were designed according to similar principles of collaboration, we observed the emergence of two diverging integration trajectories. Whereas the first process was characterized by a virtuous cycle of trust and constructive collaboration that facilitated integration, the second process turned into a vicious cycle of mistrust and conflict, causing disruption, and impeding integration. Based on our inductive analysis, we identify four distinctive features characterizing the emerging mode of collaboration. We develop a model to illustrate the dynamics of union-management collaboration in postmerger integration. These findings expand the current understanding of merger and acquisition (M&A) dynamics to include a broader set of actors and potential conflict factors in the integration process. Furthermore, our study suggests that collaborative integration processes require careful management while also potentially posing challenges for unions, particularly in the context of historical conflicts.

Colman, Helene Loe; Grøgaard, Birgitte & Stensaker, Inger G. (2022)

Organizational identity work in MNE subsidiaries: Managing dual embeddedness

Journal of International Business Studies, 53, s. 1997- 2022. Doi: 10.1057/s41267-022-00563-1

Colman, Helene Loe & Lunnan, Randi (2022)

Pulling Together While Falling Apart: A Relational View on Integration in Serial Acquirers

Journal of Management Doi: 10.1177/01492063221121788

Friesl, Martin; Stensaker, Inger G. & Colman, Helene Loe (2020)

Strategy implementation: Taking stock and moving forward

Long Range Planning, 53(6) Doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2020.102064

Strategy implementation (SI) is a significant managerial, and organizational challenge as many practitioners struggle to make strategies actionable and to achieve intended results. Moreover, there is no unified body of research on SI. This is problematic for academics aiming to contribute to a research-based body of knowledge on implementation. To remedy this problem, we draw on the strategy-as-practice perspective and conceptualize SI as a particular type of ‘strategy work’, manifest in the activities, actors, and tools through which strategy is executed. This conceptual framework allows us to synthesize the fragmented literature into five implementation practices: structure and process matching, resource matching, monitoring, framing, and negotiating. We show how these implementation activities operate at different levels and involve different actors and tools. With its emphasis on what managers (and other people) do within specific structural, temporal, and material arrangements, the strategy-as-practice perspective offers exciting opportunities for future implementation research.

Teerikangas, Satu & Colman, Helene Loe (2020)

Theorizing in the qualitative study of mergers & acquisitions

Scandinavian Journal of Management, 36(1) Doi: 10.1016/j.scaman.2019.101090 - Full text in research archive

This paper focuses on theorizing in the study of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), a globally significant inter-organizational phenomenon. We analyze 76 qualitative papers on M&As published in leading management journals between 1966–2016. We identify five modes of theorizing in the study of M&As. We find that M&A scholars make theoretical contributions using different theoretical positioning and research design strategies. The majority of the papers offer a contribution to middle-range theorizing (i.e., the literature on M&As), while a third of the papers also contribute to higher-order, or grand theories in management. In closing, this leads us to call for a rejuvenation of middle-range theorizing in management research.

Colman, Helene Loe (2020)

Facilitating integration and maintaining autonomy: The role of managerial action and interaction in post-acquisition capability transfer

Journal of Business Research Doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.09.063 - Full text in research archive

Through acquisitions, firms can access resources and capabilities they cannot develop on their own. Post-acquisition, a key managerial challenge is balancing the need for integration, to transfer capabilities, with the need for autonomy, to preserve knowledge-based capabilities. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, I find that this balancing involves managerial perceptions and actions that unfold in a reciprocal and dynamic process, resulting in capability transfer. I identify two distinct trajectories of capability transfer, one driven by the acquiring managers’ perceptions of valuable capabilities in the target, and one driven by the target managers’ desire to shield their capabilities from deterioration. This study contributes to the post-acquisition integration literature by conceptualizing the role played by target and acquiring firm managers in the dynamic, reciprocal, and sequential process of post-acquisition capability transfer.

Grøgaard, Birgitte; Colman, Helene Loe & Stensaker, Inger G. (2019)

Legitimizing, leveraging, and launching: Developing dynamic capabilities in the MNE

Journal of International Business Studies Doi: 10.1057/s41267-019-00245-5 - Full text in research archive

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) face simultaneous pressures for global integration and local responsiveness. While the extant literature acknowledges that most MNEs are neither entirely geared towards achieving global integration nor local responsiveness, scarce attention is given to how MNEs develop organizational flexibility to address multiple and shifting strategy pressures over time. In this paper, we draw on the dynamic capabilities literature to explore how the MNE develops the capabilities needed to achieve this flexibility. Through a qualitative, longitudinal case study spanning 12 years, we identify three recombination capabilities – legitimizing, leveraging, and launching capabilities – through which the MNE develops organizational flexibility. We find that these recombination capabilities improve the MNEs ability to sense and seize new opportunities and enable the MNE to overcome organizational impediments to achieve flexibility. Our study offers a process perspective that shows how the three capabilities together nourish the MNEs resilience to continuously balance between global integration and local responsiveness. Our findings have managerial implications, illustrating that launching new strategic initiatives may fail if the MNE does not have the capabilities to legitimize the new initiatives and to ensure that existing organizational strengths are properly leveraged to support the new initiatives.

Colman, Helene Loe & Rouzies, Audrey (2019)

Postacquisition Boundary Spanning: A Relational Perspective on Integration

Journal of Management, 45(5), s. 2225- 2253. Doi: 10.1177/0149206318759400

Rouzies, Audrey; Colman, Helene Loe & Angwin, Duncan (2018)

Recasting the dynamics of post-acquisition integration: An embeddedness perspective

Long Range Planning Doi: 10.1016/j.lrp.2018.03.003

M&A scholars have generally assumed that post-acquisition integration is a self-contained process. However this ignores that this process rarely unfolds as the only ongoing initiative in an organization. We contend that post-acquisition integration is not detached from other simultaneous change processes in the organizational context and this has important implications for Our understanding of how integration dynamics actually evolve. To further understand this embeddedness we examine the unfolding of a post-acquisition integration process in a Company faced with an unanticipated drop in demand due to the global economic crisis. Through a qualitative,longitudinal study conducted over three years, we carried out 151 interviews to uncover the unfolding of the post-acquisition process. We find that post-acquisition integration is embedded in a set of co-evolving processes. We highlight four mechanisms coordination, cohesion, disconnection, alienation) that arise from the co-evolution of processes that either facilitate or impede integration. Our findings contribute to our understanding of post-acquisition integration dynamics by recasting the integration process as embedded in a set of co-evolving processes that shape its unfolding.

Grøgaard, Birgitte & Colman, Helene Loe (2016)

Interpretive Frames as the Organization’s “Mirror”: From Espoused Values to Social Integration in MNEs

MIR. Management International Review: journal of international business, 56(2), s. 171- 194. Doi: 10.1007/s11575-015-0273-4

Stensaker, Inger G.; Colman, Helene Loe & Elter, Frank (2015)

Jakten på effektiviseringsgevinster : global integrering og standardisering

Magma forskning og viten, 18(7), s. 34- 45.

Colman, Helene Loe (2014)

Organisasjonsidentitet

Cappelen Damm Akademisk.

Falkum, Eivind; Colman, Helene Loe & Bråten, Mona (2014)

Industrial relations in merger integrations

Economic and Industrial Democracy: an international journal, 35(2), s. 267- 287. Doi: 10.1177/0143831X13475829

Colman, Helene Loe & Grogaard, Birgitte (2013)

Integration Vacuum: Creating Action Space for Global Strategy Implementation in International Acquisitions

Thunderbird International Business Review, 55(4) Doi: 10.1002/tie.21553

Colman, Helene Loe & Lunnan, Randi (2013)

Økt effektivitet - eller det motsatte : serieoppkjøp

Magma forskning og viten, 16(6), s. 62- 70.

Rouzies, Audrey & Colman, Helene Loe (2012)