Appendix C — Post-Acquisition Integration
Deals are underwritten on synergy and lost on integration. The financial model assumes the combined organization performs; the people system that has to deliver that performance is rarely diagnosed until attainment slips and the best people from the acquired side are already gone. CAMS gives integration drag a structure: each of the four conditions is disrupted by a close, and they are disrupted in a predictable order. This appendix maps the conditions onto post-acquisition integration.
The applied product surface for this domain is /ma; this appendix is the reference layer beneath it.
The CAMS signature of a stalling integration
- Alignment breaks first and worst. Two organizations arrive with two priority orders, two definitions of the goal, and a stated integration thesis that has not reached anyone's daily decisions. Most integration drag is unranked, conflicting priorities — Alignment, not capability or will.
- Support breaks next. Tooling, process, and reporting lines are in flux; manager coverage is disrupted by reorg; and psychological safety craters because people do not know if they have a job. An unsafe combined team gives you the polite version of every integration signal.
- Motivation turns to rational withholding. Acquired-side talent watches to see whether effort and tenure will be rewarded under the new regime; ambiguity reads as risk, and the highest-value people — the ones with options — hedge by interviewing elsewhere.
- Capability is usually intact but mis-specified — roles are redundant or redefined, so capable people are graded against a job that no longer exists or overlaps a counterpart's.
Why regretted attrition is the lagging tell
By the time integration failure shows up in attrition numbers, the diagnosis is months late and the regretted exits — the people you most wanted to keep — have left for named competitors. The from-to attrition read (who you lose, to whom, and whether you regret it) is the instrument for catching this, and protected feedback is what makes the underlying conditions reportable while there is still time to act. The binding constraint in the first two quarters post-close is almost always Alignment or Support; treating it as a Motivation/retention problem (retention bonuses) addresses the symptom and not the cause.
Where the evidence will anchor
- M&A integration — the human-capital determinants of deal underperformance distinct from financial structure
- Cultural and priority alignment — integration as an alignment problem; the cost of unranked dual priorities
- Uncertainty and turnover — job insecurity, regretted attrition, and key-talent flight post-close
- Role redundancy — capability mis-specification when two role structures merge
Specific DOIs and effect-size claims will replace these as cams-anchor-registry.json matures (PFX-53).
Status: draft appendix. See /ma for the applied surface. Citations are placeholders until the anchor registry ships (PFX-53).