Operation Management

The importance and the influence of the corporate culture in a merger and acquisition context

Authors:

Hanane Makhlouk Olena Shevchuk

Tutor: Program:

Dr. Mikael Lundgren Master´s Programme in Leadership and Management in International Context Subject: Change Management Level and semester: Graduate, May 2008 Baltic Business School

Acknowledgement

First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to all the teachers involved in the Master Programme for their contribution in developing our management and leadership skills.

We would like to thank Dr. Philippe Daudi and Dr. Mikael Lundgren for their commitment and support through the whole process of writing our Thesis. Thank you for your comments and advices which were helpful in improving our Master Thesis.

We want to thank Terese Johansson for providing us with thesis from previous years.

We also want to thank our families for their support and our classmates for encouragement and useful discussions.

Hanane Makhlouk and Olena Shevchuk May 2008

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are one of the fastest strategic options that companies choose to face the global competitive market. However, previous researches have highlighted the high rate of failure among M&A. In fact, the merging companies have to face the issue of cultural differences which is one of the common reasons of M&A failure, reinforced when it comes to cross-borders combinations. Indeed, both partners incorporate in the new merged company the national and the corporate cultures. So, in order to be successful, the leaders have to consider the importance and the influence of these issues meticulously during the postmerger integration process; at the same level as the synergies, business performance and profit improvement. In order to have a better understanding of the corporate culture mismatches issues, we will present first in the theoretical part three major sections: the merger and acquisition context, the...