Management Styles and Culture Clashes
My thesis subject is “Management Styles and Culture Clashes Within M&A : why do cultural clashes exist in mergers and how have they occurred in the past in large American corporations?” I am supposed to answer this :” 3 paragraphs : What is culture? A definition from research. What factors influence control? Has the idea of culture changed over time? II. 6 paragraphs: Arriving at the 6 components that you mentioned below(“6 components that are essential to create a proper corporate culture within a company :Vision, Values, Practices, People, Narrative, Place”).
Why are these so important for culture? III. 3 paragraphs: How do employees learn a culture? How do you complete successful socialization? IV. 3 paragraphs: What are mergers and acquisitions? Why are they difficult to manage? … set up the conversation / point you make in the paragraph below. Your thesis is that companies should want the representation from both sides. “To highlight this research question I believe that I should focus on two big mergers that are well known worldwide :1- AOL with Time Warner, the latter being described as “a world of expense accounts and intellectual property” and AOL as “far more entrepreneurial than Time Warner”2- Disney with Pixar, Pixar “making blockbuster, family-friendly films” and being at the time quite advanced in terms of technology compared to Disney that was more at the time in a period of creative failure.
Those two mergers are in the media industry and took place in the United States, there will be for sure enough data to work on !I think I should work around the 6 components that are essential to create a proper corporate culture within a company :Vision Values Practices Narrative Place A few years ago I already wrote that paragraph, which seems interesting to me :“In companies that operate internationally, it makes sense to see teams made up of employees of different nationalities. Thus, intercultural elements must necessarily be taken into account in carrying out each person’s responsibilities. These cultural differences should in no way constitute a blocking factor, but on the contrary they should be an additional asset.
At least, that’s the wish of every business executive who has a diverse workforce within their company. But unfortunately, this is not always the case because you are never safe from any slippage at one time or another. To offer a better guarantee on the smooth running of professional relations between staff members, therefore, companies attach great importance to intercultural management. This tends to erase, even if their complete disappearance is impossible, the blocking source differences, to replace them with a spirit of cohesion and solidarity. The company can thus integrate this mix of cultures in its possession into its strategy, perception of a new market, prospecting for new customers, or even the development of a partnership with a foreign company. Today, almost all large companies have integrated intercultural factors into their development strategies.”
The question of cultural clashes within M&A is quite important as we have seen a rise of hostile takeovers in the past months after the Covid-19 pandemics. Those takeovers have occurred all around the world in Fortune 500 companies and their equivalent outside the United States. Especially in the case of takeovers there are often strong cultural clashes as those companies have been acquired most of the time against the will of their employees. In addition, it can also be different cultures since those acquisitions can take place abroad with companies from different countries and that have strong values. I believe that I should do a literature review as there is a large number of press releases, press articles, reports that could easily highlight my thesis subject.—-Here are my different ideas so far, for now I only need to answer the 4 questions that I have put, all the things following are the element I would want you to focus/work on
