With social structure and technology rapidly changing, business globalisation has been regarded as a worldwide trend. While there have been many cases and literature on management of culture integration for merger and acquisition from a Western perspective, few have discussed cultural integration in an Asian context. This study provides a case study of cultural integration strategies Lenovo has undertaken to manage employees from both teams after the M&A. It adopts a semi-structure face-to-face interview research method, which 5 participants were selected from the culture integration committee for interview. During the interview, each participant answered the questions from their perspective of the job position they are currently in. The method would enhance the quality of the research as it looks into the problems and strategy that Lenovo has encountered and undertaken from various points of view. However, as no employees from IBM PC-D on the committee were available to participate in the research, it might place some limitations on the research simply because IBM team’s opinions were not taken into account. After analysing the results obtained from the participants, the researcher found that there were several motives for Lenovo to acquire IBM PC-D, including: - 1) internationalization, 2) acquiring technology and skills, 3) acquiring a brand, 4) obtaining access to new customers, 5) increase bargaining position to suppliers. Among these five motives, acquiring brand was considered to be the most important motive. As Chinese product has always been marketed at the lower end of the product line with low costs and poor quality, acquiring IBM’s brand would enable Lenovo to boost its product image and to gain access to customers outside the Chinese market. In managing two teams within the organisation, Lenovo has taken very few steps to integrate two teams into one. Instead, a separate management mode was encouraged by Lenovo to allow IBM PC-D to maintain its own management system and procedures. In addition, a culture integration committee was voluntarily set up by employees from various departments to design initiatives to encourage communication between two teams. When problems arise due to the difference between two teams, Lenovo has adopted an accommodation strategy by making adjustments to the work schedule of its employee in the Lenovo team in order to accommodate employees in IBM team. As a result, it has increased the workload for staff in Lenovo team and this may thus lead to stress and work-life imbalance to its employees. Overall, the strategy that Lenovo has adopted to manage two teams seems to have worked well and the culture integration committee appears to have served well in encouraging the communication between two teams. On the other hand, as the participants in the interview were not directly involved with the designing and crafting the strategy of culture integration, that might have some limitation on the result. Therefore, it is suggested that further research can be done to capture the opinion from members that are directly involved in the design of culture integration strategy as well as teams from IBM PC-D in order to ensure a well provided empirical and consistent view.

This thesis contends that a corporate merger, on the scale of a global order, is a 'catastrophic change' and depends on 'killing off' parts of the former organisations for its success. The act of annihilating parts of the former organisations is experienced as disengaged and murderous by organisational members. This arouses persecutory anxiety of an unbearable intensity amongst members from which they defend themselves by emotionally disconnecting from the psychic reality of the organisation. Several contentions underpin the hypothesis: 1. that a merger involves a developmental process in the creation and growth of a new organisation; 2. the event of a merger causes disruptions to roles and relationships that are experienced as a loss of power, status and identity, and also as an emotional loss for what had been cherished and valued in the former organisation/s; 3. the emotional loss evokes the symbolic experience of the loss of a 'loved object', and an instinctual loss becomes attached thereby to the real losses; and thus, 4. the process of merger involves a symbolic destruction of the 'loved organisational object' of the former organisations, as held in the minds of organisational members. The thesis is based on case study research conducted on the topic of emotional connectedness in a network organisation over a three year period. Fieldwork began at the time when the participating firm had just formed from a global merger of two large global enterprises. The Australia-New Zealand regional operations were the focus of the study. The research discovered a significant degree of emotional disconnectedness due to: 1. the nature of the work that required staff to work on client sites, away from home and often alone; 2. a multiplicity of organisational structures that engendered fragmentary connections; 3. valuing individuals' self-reliance over and above the interdependence of organisational members; 4. the many external changes experienced by the firm from the effects of the merger and from market economics, political and business turmoil, and for the Australia- New Zealand operations, a shift in the location of their corporate head office from North America to Europe; 5. increasing uncertainty within the industry, and a commensurate increase in competitiveness; 6. a loss of profitability in the Asia-Pacific region in which the case study participants were located; 7. the turnover in the regional director's role, with three appointments in less than two years; 8. dramatic rises and falls in staff numbers, ranging from an initial 450, to a high of 750, and sudden decline to 120 people during the period of the study; 9. the reluctance of vice-presidents and directors to take up a corporate management role, preferring to work as 'project managers' on client assignments; and 10. all these factors contributing to an anxiety about the future of the Australia-New Zealand (A-NZ) operations which was expressed as a fear of survival. In response to these many factors, staff and management felt vulnerable and insecure, experiencing the merger as an annihilation of 'loved objects'. These included the loss of a partner's autonomy and ownership in the firm, familiar work procedures, and the loss of belonging to a partner's work group and associated long-term relationships. The emotional aspects of dealing with these losses and feelings were placed upon individuals to manage for themselves. The burden of ensuring the survival of the firm was displaced upon individuals, such that consultants became not only the 'container for work', but also the 'container for the organisation's survival'. As the merger progressed and more changes to the business were implemented with little to no containment of people's felt experiences, the psychic reality of the A-NZ operations became saturated with persecutory anxiety. In some parts of these operations, the anxiety became so great that group interactions (what there were of them) seemed psychotic. Those in management roles displayed a level of anxiety that appeared to be unbearable for the individuals concerned, and which resulted at times in manic responses to the human and commercial needs of the business. Bion's theories of catastrophic change and emotional links, and Klein's theories on persecutory and depressive anxieties are applied to understanding the systems psychodynamics of the effects of the merger upon the organisation. The case reveals the presence of persecutory anxiety in the immediate aftermath of the merger, lasting for nearly three years. Various social defence mechanisms are identified as being used by organisational members against this anxiety. They are: the co-existence of multiple organisational structures; a sentient sub-system of 'counselling families'; idealisation of autonomous individuals; plus, the mechanisms of projection, denial and regression. Four factors are identified as significant for containing destructive forces in a corporate merger: a) the role of emotional links to understanding the internal reality of a newly merged organisation; b) the containment of experiences of catastrophic change and projective processes; c) managing the realistic and neurotic anxieties of organisational members; and, d) identifying and managing the primary risk in a merger. A model is presented on the systems psychodynamics of a corporate merger. It identifies the change process that a merger entails, and the psychodynamics of this process using Bion's concept of container'contained. The thesis contributes to understanding the psychic reality of organisational mergers and offers a perspective that being alert to staff members' felt experiences and their emotional connectedness, as a normal part of business, provides 'leading data' on the health of the enterprise. Managers who are more 'wholly' informed about organisational realities, both external and psychic realities, can work more realistically on resolving problems, assessing risks, or making strategic business decisions.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [61-63]).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>When companies go trough a merger or an acquisition all involved parties within the organisations becomes affected. These changes can affect the company in many areas which could create tensions and anxiety among employees which could create strong negative forces at the end and prevent the new organisation to function at its best. In service companies this could be of great importance to overcome since they often are dependent on functional organisations to help them create a wanted quality. This study will address this problem and will do so in a case study performed on a transportations company which have gone trough a number of mergers. Due to these mergers, the company has also grown in both numbers of employees and in financial conditions.</p><p>The applied thesis statement is: “How should a small expanding company manage the integration of acquired companies and at the same time maintain a sought identity within the organisation, in order to reach their main strategic objectives? “. The ambition is to be able to understand how the studied company has developed and also to analyse its organisational transition. Furthermore we also want to create proposals for organisations that are facing future organisational transitions, based from our findings in this study.</p><p>This study has been conducted with a hermeneutic scientific ideal and an abductive approach. The empirical collection was done inside the studied organisation in a qualitative manner. We conducted nine interviews, one with the manager (co-owner) and the other eight with employees inside the company. We wanted to be able to see both parties’ sides of the mergers. Therefore the interviews where conducted at two separate offices in different cities.</p><p>The theoretical framework consists of a number of theoretical areas, who together creates a holistic view over the entire research area. The theoretical parts consist of: Organisation, network, mergers, acquisitions, family firms, corporate culture, identity, social identity, service quality and Human Resources.</p><p>Our main conclusion is of the studied company shows that the biggest problem which the organisation faces today is the lack of communication between the manager and the employees. Although we claim that the merger has played a mayor impact on the company in many areas. Some of the main difficulties which we identified were the fact that the merger never was discussed thoroughly between the management and the employees. We also claim that the company when divided between the two offices have created a cultural gap between the wanted culture and the actual culture. We argue that the quality thinking permeates trough the entire organisation and all of the respondents have described the importance of achieving a high quality service within the organisation.</p>

<p>This study aims at introducing and describing a novel multi parameter analysis method to identify potential acquisition targets and to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the overall match between a target company and its acquirer. The method was tested with two recent real cases involving each an antibody based biotech company and a large fully integrated pharmaceutical company. The model was validated by comparing two independent antibody companies against the real cases, testing if they would have made better targets. It was found out that the in reality acquired companies scored highest, thus proving the validity of the method. One of the four potential targets got the highest scores for both acquirers. Consequently one of the acquired targets was only the second best match. The still independent companies would not have been better targets. The lowest scoring target company did get identical scores for both acquiring companies. Despite the proper prediction of targets, the scoring did not reveal the true underlying motives for the acquisitions, nor could significant parameters be identified to discriminate between target and non-target. This study adds a novel, valuable tool to the still limited arsenal of methods to qualitatively and quantitatively measure a match between target and acquirer solely based on publicly available data.</p>

<p>Mergers between companies has become more and more common in Sweden and in the rest of the world with the motive to increase the competitive strength in the current markets and has an important role within organisational development of companies. When organisations merger there is not only buildings and objects that are put together but also their individual organisational structures, people, values and cultures. This can be a difficult process and can affect many people in how they think conscious as well as unconscious, feel and react.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of how employees are affected following a merger when changes in the organisational culture come up, and how these changes are expressed.</p><p>This thesis is delimited to investigate only one company, Skruf Snus AB and only focus on their business and employees in the region of Stockholm. The thesis contains a qualitative investigation with semi structured interviews that has been carried out with eight employees at Skruf Snus AB. The thesis is partly based on a model of Schein which describes the different levels in organisational culture and partly on some theories about reactions to change in relation to the integration between the employees following a merger.</p><p>The results of the investigation indicate that with a merger the whole organisational culture is affected and therefore also the employees. Routines, communication, loyalty and relations have been changed. A gain of stress, anxiety, sadness and disappointment appears between the employees. This is often a result of lack of information and indistinct directives. Concepts like “Us and Them” are created, both unconscious and conscious and are permeated through the entire organisation.</p>

Under 1900-talet har företagsfusioner förekommit i vågformade mönster där tider med lugnare aktivitet har avlösts av tider med något som närmast kan beskrivas som fusionsyra. Fusionsvågornas antal och storlek har efterhand ökat och vågtopparna har vuxit sig allt högre, något som inte minst varit tydligt under de senaste 6-7 åren Vilka är de motiv som har gjort fusioner till ett så vanligt förekommande strategiskt agerande? Finns det likheter inom och mellan branscher avseende motiven att fusionera? Det empiriska materialet består av primär- och sekundärdata insamlat från sex fusioner fördelat på tre branscher; tillverkningsindustrin, bankbranschen och IT-branschen. I analysen används tre skilda perspektiv, och syftet med detta är att skapa bred förståelse och belysa komplexiteten i fenomenet. Resultaten visar på tydliga likheter i motiv inom branscher, samt att det även finns vissa motiv som är branschöverskridande. Vidare innebär de tre perspektiven ett medningsfullt sätt att skapa förståelse och belysa komplexiteten kring motiv till fusioner. / During the twentieth century, mergers&amp;aquisitions have occured in waves where times of low activityfrequently has turned into periods of high activity. M&amp;A:s have been of increasing numbers and growing size, which was extra evident during the last wave during the 1990:s. What are the motives that has made M&amp;A such a widely used strategy? Are there similarities within and across industries regarding merger motives? The empirical material consists of primary and secundary data collected from two mergers in three industries respectively; manufacturing, banking and IT. The analysis make use of three different perspectives, the reason for this being to create understanding and furthermore illuminate the complexity of the problem. The results clearly demonstrate similarities in merger motives within the industries, but also give some support for similarities across the industries. Furthermore, using a multi perspective approach has proved to be a good way of illuminating the problem.

Nowadays, many firms are or have already been engaged in an acquisition process, either as target or acquirer. While these companies seem confident in the potential returns of such endeavors, the positive aspect of those acquisitions has yet to be proven. There is indeed a vivid discussion among scholars, which are divided into two categories. On the one hand, there are those considering acquisitions as a source of additional knowledge that will in turn increase the innovation within the company; and on the other hand, those denigrating acquisitions, assimilating them to a “poison pill” for innovation. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate whether the acquisitions will influence positively or negatively the innovative performance of companies involved in such processes. Using a quantitative approach, this research analyzed the R&amp;D investments made by those companies and the issued patents gained in return. The research provides mixed results. While acquisitions seem to have a positive impact on the companies‟ innovative performance during the two years following the acquisition, this positive impact does not last and even becomes negative during the third year.

The thesis put contemporary M&amp;A practices and M&amp;A research into context and in so doing identifies challanges in the value creating process. Looking closer at how the relationship development is treated in the M&amp;A process the study sheds further light on how practitioners work and could work to increase the chances of success in M&amp;As in the future.