New firm formation in the wake of mergers and acquisitions: Are employees pushed or pulled into entrepreneurship?
This study investigates the relationship between mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and employee entrepreneurship in human capital-intensive service sectors. We investigate two sets of theoretical mechanisms. First, M&As may push employees entrepreneurship by lowering the average barriers of leaving the current employment (i.e. being associated with general deterioration of working conditions). Second, M&A activities may generate new entrepreneurial opportunities, which are first and foremost accessible by employees directly affected by M&As. Results on employee entrepreneurship in 3 039 Swedish firms during the time period 2000-2009 confirm that the number of firms spawned from a specific incumbent increases following an M&A. Push-oriented factors are found to contribute to this effect, but a dominating part of the total effect remains unexplained. This suggests that pull-oriented explanations of opportunity creation in the wake of M&As constitute an important avenue for further research on employee entrepreneurship.