Organizational culture is basically a system of shared beliefs that members of the organization have. This determines how members in an organization act when confronted with decision-making responsibilities. In every organization, you will notice that there are systems or patterns of values that are constantly evolving. These shared values will also affect how the employees will deal with issues and concerns inside and outside the organization.
Every single person comes from different backgrounds and lifestyles but in an organizational culture, each one of them perceive the organizational culture in the same way, thus, this perception is one of the shared aspects of an organizational culture. There are seven dimensions of an organizational culture, namely, attention to detail, innovation and risk taking, outcome orientation, stability, people orientation, aggressiveness, and team orientation. Each of these aspects has its own role in defining what the organizational culture will be.
Organizational change is proven to be difficult to achieve since the organizational culture is already the accepted norm of the way to do things. People inside the organization regard culture change with fear, anxiety, and suspicious. That is why effective communication is essential when undergoing culture change. This is especially true in merger and acquisitions because you need to integrate two different cultures in one organization.
For example, in 2000, Time Warner and AOL announced that they will undergo a merger. These two companies have radically dissimilar organizational cultures because one is a traditional media organization while the other one was more focused in information technology. The two cultures clashed with the Time Warner employees thinking that the AOL employees are aggressive and the AOL employees thinking that the Time Warner people are lazy.
Another thing that makes two culture clash in a merger is the perception of being a “winner” or a “loser.” Obviously, the winner in this case is the bigger company but everyone from both organizations needs to let go of this perception because it comes in the way of an effective and efficient workplace. This will also make the employees from the smaller organization resentful and suspicious of their counterparts.
Oftentimes, two cultures clash because people from different organization perceive things differently. They can blame their counterpart if failure occurs because they regard the other as incompetent. The best thing managers and CEOs can do to avoid this scenario is to introduce a different culture for the company or at least make their employees aware of what they should expect. This will minimize the adverse effects of mergers in the morale of the employees and ensure the smooth flow of operations.
