Merger integration: dealing with heterogeneous company cultures during cultural integration

In contrast to common knowledge, company culture is heterogeneous and multifaceted. It is common to discover coexisting and interacting subcultures within a single company, which significantly impact the process of cultural integration. Moreover, the vast diversity stemming from national cultures further complicates matters, presenting significant challenges for companies striving to achieve their objectives, especially in the context of cross-border mergers.

This emphasizes the crucial need to acknowledge and grasp the impact of subcultures in the cultural assimilation phase of combined companies during mergers and acquisitions. It questions the idea of uniform and consolidated organizational cultures and underscores the significance of simultaneous subcultures in molding the integration journey.

Opposite subcultures within organizations can lead to a dynamic interplay of interactions, confrontations, and evolutions over time. This can result in a diverse range of perspectives emerging about the assimilation journey undertaken by personnel from different companies.

Introducing the concept of revitalization, a process aimed at renewing, refreshing, and restoring vitality to systems, whether natural, cultural, or organizational; in our case mainly cultural [1].

Revitalization involves actively recreating and re-forming a subculture by combining elements of the acquired firm's cultural framework with those needed to adapt to the acquiring firm's culture. This strategy helps employees identify better with the acquiring firm's culture and reduces their level of stress.

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Sources

[1] Conflicting subcultures in M&A: a longitudinal study of integrating a radical internet firm into a bureaucratic telecoms firm. (2016, April 1). British Journal of Management (wiley-blackwell).