Emotions play a crucial role in everybody’s life. They are always present,

they enrich experiences, challenge and make us feel alive. Over the last few

decades, emotions have been studied in different disciplines. Psychologists,

sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, brain researchers, neurobiologists

and neurophysiologists approached this subject from diverse perspectives

and agreed that emotions strongly influence human thinking

and acting.

While mainstream management literature is still on a ‘rational’ track

that disregards emotions, some recent developments recognize the importance

of addressing emotions in organizations. The same is true for merger

and acquisition (M&A) literature. Day-to-day perceptions confirm that

mergers and acquisitions are highly emotional life events for all those

affected. But only after years of ‘merger mania’, combined with high failure

rates (about 70 per cent of all mergers fail to reach their initial goals), has

the importance of focusing on ‘soft’ issues been acknowledged. Nevertheless,

even within the people-oriented stream of M&A literature, emotions

as such are still underresearched. Emotions are mentioned in the

context of the so-called ‘merger syndrome’, but they are almost never

studied explicitly.