When two organisations, employing hundreds or thousands of people, merge, a great deal of effort is given over to due diligence. Much time is devoted to poring over finances, integrating IT systems, telling the stock market about synergies and drawing up new structure charts.Once the lawyers, accountants, IT people and process engineers have performed their surgery, the patient wakes up wondering why they are in so much pain. After a while, it may dawn on leaders that people change more slowly and in more complex ways than systems and processes.
Unlike most major changes, mergers and acquisitions have an enormous effect on culture and people’s sense of identity. If one organisation effectively takes over another and imposes its culture on the new combined organisation, like an invading army, then people in the organisation that has been taken over can have a very hard time adjusting. If the cultures of the two organisations differ greatly some will find it impossible to adjust and may simply leave. Worse than that, they may stay but mentally opt out of the new arrangement and do the bare minimum to get by…….read the rest of this article at http://www.hrdirector.com/ see Web Features
