Preparing Managers for Entrepreneur’s Exit

The purpose of this study is to advance the literature on the target side in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and entrepreneurial exit by developing a framework that explains how companies can prepare managers for the acquisitions, considering the different backgrounds and different initial motivations. This paper builds on the imprinting perspective and proposes that managers are motivated by different goals and objectives; and that these goals and objectives are instrumental in determining their attitude toward different exit strategies. In addition, we suggest that the relationships between motivation and preferred exit are moderated by the managers’ experiences and backgrounds. The first main contribution of the paper is delineating how the manager’s background may be the factor that both resolves the contradictions between different perspectives in the literature and offers greater support for previously tested hypotheses. The second main contribution is the addition of motivation for power and its relationship with the choice of exit strategies, as this specific motivation may affect the managers’ preferences and thus choices.