Managing Post-Acquisition Cultural Change: An Acquired Company’s Perspective

ABSTRACT: Post-M&A organizational cultural change is a traumatic experience for organizational members. It generates resistance and contributes to M&A failure. Nevertheless, the literature on managing post-M&A cultural change is scarce and largely focused on overcoming the debilitating impact of inter-organizational cultural differences on communication. We argue that focus on cultural differences is important but not sufficient for a successful management strategy. Other factors, such as how company members perceive the outcomes of cultural changes, should be taken into account. We explore how acquired companies’ members justify their attitudes towards post-acquisition cultural changes. Following our findings, we provide recommendations for the guidance of cultural change in acquired companies by the acquirers’ managers. We develop our arguments by building a conceptual framework using the existing literature. The framework is subsequently examined and developed further through three interview-based case studies, one of which we present in detail.

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