Cultural Integration After Mergers And Acquisitions

Corporate merger and acquisition is an important means for an enterprise to enlarge its operation scale and increase its competitive strength. Merger and acquisition brings forth a series of influences and consequences on the company and the national economy as well. The surge of merging activities of the present world has seen a high rate of failure, one main reason for which is that the corporate management fail to understand the corporate culture of the targeted company before the merger takes place and that there is a lack of consideration for the post-merger cultural integration. Beginning with a study on the implications of merger and corporate culture and commenting on the motivation of merger, this paper explains the characteristics of the corporate culture and its development and it analyses the in-depth problems of corporate culture.As corporate culture is meant to contribute to the competition and development of the company and that merging of different companies often leads to cultural conflicts arising from cultural differences, the duality of culture in the merged company necessitates and makes possible cultural integration. The reasons for cultural differences are also encompassed in the process of cultural integration. The post-merger integration is to start from the nature of the corporate culture, which includes integration of the spirits, system, material culture and conduct culture of the company. The cultural integration of a company involves elements such as the aspects, specific steps, modes, methods and principles, etc. This paper is intended to provide a complete set of management and operation system on cultural integration for merger andacquisition enterprises so as to promote cultural construction of company of China and to serve merger activities in China.