Confidentiality Constraints Within Mergers and Acquisitions: Gaining Insights Through a ‘Bubble’ Metaphor*
通过一家富时100制药公司并购后四年的案例研究，用‘气泡’隐喻揭示保密协议对签署者的个人影响及信息泄露维度，帮助管理者理解并购中的保密约束。
Mergers and acquisitions are extremely sensitive, both within and outside the organizations involved. Confidentiality agreements are therefore essential for allowing teams the ‘space’ to develop potential scenarios for future integration. Despite the importance of confidentiality in practice, the subject has received little coverage in the management literature. By adopting a case‐study approach, this research explores aspects of confidentiality in a four‐year post‐acquisition integration programme in a FTSE100 pharmaceutical company. The paper identifies a range of personal impacts on the signatories, as well as various dimensions of information transfer despite the agreement being in place. Through the use of a metaphor, the research suggests that a confidentiality agreement has many similarities with the properties and characteristics of a bubble. This bubble trope is used to enhance conceptual understanding of confidentiality constraints in an organizational‐change context. The paper concludes by suggesting some ‘key learnings’ in relation to using confidentiality agreements in strategic change programmes such as a merger or acquisition.