| Acquisitions, as an organizational strategy will continue. Lack of post acquisition success found in organization financial reports, shareholder returns, degree of organizational innovation, maintenance of productivity, and retention of key employees is a continuous problem. Rationale for explaining continual failure of acquisitions includes personnel and behavioral issues, organizational culture issues, new organization and role design, and attrition of key employees. Implementation of the post acquisition integration strategy by the operator culture front-line managers can influence the success or failure of the acquisition. This qualitative study was conducted to understand the experiences, meanings, and sense making approaches of 20 front-line managers from one United States-based pharmaceutical organization, that have managed employees during a post acquisition integration within the past five years. Interpretation of results revealed seven super-ordinate themes that undergirded the front line managers' experience including profound uncertainty, importance of communication with other management cultures to create meaning and achieve post merger objectives, increased demands of communication effort, time, and skill sets, implementation of specific management strategies to mitigate complexities, and use of reflection, feedback, and a sense of control inform the process of self management amidst the complexities of the post acquisition integration. A model was developed to illustrate the experience of front line managers during a post acquisition integration. Information gleaned from this study may help improve understanding among executive, middle, and front-line management cultures, and identify strategies to align the management cultures in an effort to enhance organizational learning and goal attainment in the post-acquisition integration setting. |
