M&A Cultural Integration Issues

Leading through transition

Organizations today undergo mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures for many reasons: among them, to acquire technologies, products and market access; to create economies of scale; and to establish global presence. However, culture has emerged as one of the dominant factors that prevent effective integrations. Making appropriate, timely decisions and operating effectively becomes extremely difficult when merging companies with different cultures. This in turn can undermine the potential value created through the new integrated company.

The attached white paper discusses the importance of culture during the integration of two companies, and explores ways to harness it for an effective integration. Culture is a powerful and implicit factor that can be directly linked to behaviors affecting business value. By tying it to value-creation for identifying and changing specific behavior, it can become an effective tool for achieving post-merger integration objectives.