Good learners: how top management teams affect the success and frequency of acquisitions

We develop new theory and hypotheses on how a firm's top management team learns from acquisition experience, why, in consequence, the composition of the team is crucial, and how this affects acquisition frequency and success. We focus on the diversity of the top team and argue that heterogeneous teams, as compared to homogenous ones, acquire less but benefit more from their acquisition experience and are more successful with their acquisitions because they avoid mis-transferring their experiences. We tested our hypotheses on acquisition frequency and success using longitudinal data on more than 2,000 acquisitions by 25 Dutch companies over four decades (1966 to 2006).