The impact of organizational culture and learning capabilities on the effectiveness and the performance of the cross border acquisitions; an empirical assessment in Turkish banking

The banking system in Turkey has received a great interest from the foreign investors starting from 2004 until 2009 financial crisis on the world. The foreign ownership has reached %50 of the total system. However, after acquisitions, while some of the acquired banks were successful, some of them did not perform well. Some of them were sold again. In our study, we showed that the organizational culture and the organizational learning capabilities have the effect on the success and the performance of the entities after the acquisitions. Our quantitative study was done by using Daniel Denison et al (2006) organizational culture survey OCS, and Ricardo Chiva et al (2007) organizational learning capabilities index with the middle and the top managers of seven Turkish acquired banks by the foreign share holders. In addition to that, some of the questions of Bontis et al.(2002) for the business performance, Larsson et al.(1999) for the synergy were adopted into our index. At the end of the study, we proved that organization cultural traits (Involvement, consistency, adaptability, mission) and while organizational learning capabilities (experimentation, interaction with the external environment, dialogue, participative decision making) through synergy both together have a direct effect to the business performance after the acquisition. In addition to that, the successful business performance has a positive effect on the financial performance. Our study proved that the strong organizational culture and the effect of organizational learning capabilities trough synergy are correlated and together have a positive effect on the success of the cross border acquisitions.