Corporate culture and communication

Résumé du document

This report aims at presenting the concept of post merger cultural integration as the key element for a successful merger operation. The last decade, in the global business is likely to be called the era of the merger. In today's global economy, one cannot turn his back on the opportunities offered by emerging industries and markets in Asia, Middle East or Eastern Europe. Therefore, mergers as well as acquisitions have become a widespread form of external growth and many firms have integrated it in their strategy as a cost-effective mean of acquiring new assets, products and markets. The opportunity and success of a merger is often reduced to the evaluation of financial health and performance. Moreover, during the negociation and processing of a merger people might feel very optimistic talking about scale economies, geographical expansion, new know-hows, or new markets. But half of the mergers fail and two third of them do not get the expected results.

Extraits

[...] In order to go deeply into the analysis of the process, we also highlighted the different pitfalls that managers should avoid on their path to achieving this challenging operation. As a conclusion, we gave two exemples to add more impact to our presentation and illustrate the theory by applying it to real and concrete situations. They helped us demonstrate the high importance of cultural integration in mergers and acquisitions that is too often left aside by companies who only focus on the financial and commercial aspects. [...]

[...] Mergers and Acquisitions. 20: 50-51 David M Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions Their Impact on HRM. Personnel Administrator. November: 33-44 Internet Ressources Renault www.renault.com, www.planeterenault.com Nissan www.nissanusa.com Japan www.clickjapan.org Differences France /Japan http://www.cefj.org/jp/site/archives/CR/Ghosn.pdf FIGURE 1 : The Three Levels of Culture Artifacts Organisation structure and processe Espoused Values Strategy, goals and phylosophy Basic assumptions Unconscious beliefs, thoughts and feelings Visible Invisible autonomy interdependance Preservation Symbiosis Rationalization FIGURE 2 : Trade-off Models Between Autonomy and Interdependance Are you thinking what I'm thinking ? [...]

[...] Organisational culture. Here are the main elements caracterizing an organisational culture (G. Hofstede 1980) that the merging companies should consider before merging. These key elements can give an overview of the way a company behaves in its environment (competitors, customers and supplyiers) and also on the way employees, managers and shareholders interact with each other. To conclude, we can say that culture has a strong impact on the way people communicate and act and on the way an organisation is structured. [...]

[...] Here all members of the group may be potential source or receptor (of values). In this model each group is seeking it's own interest, trying to benefit from the counterparts assets. This results in enriched creativity and innovation due to the confrontation of multiple perspectives. This situation is however more challenging to manage and needs a clear hierarchical and and regulatory frame. The 3 stages of integration. The intercultural issues related to mergers do not only occur after the signature of the contract. [...]

[...] During this step, the companies should have devoted much more time to select, train the staff and to create structures marked out for the operation. Nevertheless, this problem of time also shows important structural problems into the integration process. It means that even if the agreement given by the government is long, the actors of the merger have to use this time to plan the important step of the merger and also anticipate the future problems. This strategy was adopted by Carrefour during its rapprochement with Promodès. This time of waiting was reserved for the communication of the C.E.O. [...]