Authors:
Tutor:
Program:
Hanane Makhlouk
Olena Shevchuk
Dr. Mikael Lundgren
Master´s Programme in
Leadership and Management in International Context
Subject:
Change Management
Level and semester: Graduate, May 2008
Baltic Business School
Acknowledgement
First of all, we would like to express our gratitude to all the teachers involved in the Master
Programme for their contribution in developing our management and leadership skills.
We would like to thank Dr. Philippe Daudi and Dr. Mikael Lundgren for their commitment and support through the whole process of writing our Thesis. Thank you for your comments and advices which were helpful in improving our Master Thesis.
We want to thank Terese Johansson for providing us with thesis from previous years.
We also want to thank our families for their support and our classmates for encouragement and useful discussions.
Hanane Makhlouk and Olena Shevchuk
May 2008
Abstract
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are one of the fastest strategic options that companies choose to face the global competitive market. However, previous researches have highlighted the high rate of failure among M&A. In fact, the merging companies have to face the issue of cultural differences which is one of the common reasons of M&A failure, reinforced when it comes to cross-borders combinations. Indeed, both partners incorporate in the new merged company the national and the corporate cultures. So, in order to be successful, the leaders have to consider the importance and the influence of these issues meticulously during the postmerger integration process; at the same level as the synergies, business performance and profit improvement. In order to have a better understanding of the corporate culture mismatches issues, we will present first in the theoretical part three major sections: the merger and