Culture Integration

The mere existence of potential synergies is no guarantee that merged companies will realise their potential. With numerous writers citing cultural issues as key to a successful integration, we treat cultural integration as no less important than business or IT integration.

We have our own methodology to deal with this critical dimension which executes the following steps:

1. Identify the corporate cultures of the merging organizations through quantitative and qualitative analysis using our own proprietary methodology
2. Identify the cultural gap
3. Identify the desired target corporate culture
4. Identify measures management can take to move both cultures towards the required culture

Our experience has shown that culture in M&A certainly does matter and is ignored leads to lower productivity.

Cartwright and Cooper (2001) cite a survey by the British Institute of Management (1986) which concluded that managerial underestimation of the difficulties of merging two cultures was a major contributory factor in M&A failure.
Cartwright, Sue and Cooper, Gary L. (2001) Managing Mergers, Acquisitions and Strategic Alliances: Integrating People and Cultures, Butterworth-Heinemann