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Corporate Culture
Wall Street Journal Analysis
Seven Steps for Addressing Postmerger Cultural Issues. Fred Miller, April 3, 2015. Word count =1186 words.
The specific topic addressed in the article from the assigned chapter is Development of a Strong Culture. It focuses on the possible issues that may occur as the result of the merger of two companies that had different corporate cultures before. The author studies those problems and outlines their reasons. The article provides seven steps that can help to address different postmerger cultural issues in the company. The article refers to Development of a Strong Culture topic because it provides recommendations on developing a strong corporate culture in the company after the merger (Miller, 2015).
Key Issues
Very often, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) forget that corporate culture is an important element of any company. Before and during the merger, they consider only financial data, and do not pay attention to cultures and their combination. As a result, they fail to develop a new common culture, and it causes many issues.
Mergers can cause various cultural risks for a new company. A shared approach to decision-making should be developed, and it should be appropriate for a new culture. Supply chain between two companies that became one organization is an important part of a corporate culture, as well. One more risk for corporate culture is a new internal brand that will be respected by employees from both companies. Finally, merger should provide some improvements and benefits in corporate culture that satisfy workers and avoid possible risks.
It is often hard to develop a new culture quickly. Moreover, many managers do not know how to create it (Miller, 2015).
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Analysis
The key issue of corporate culture in postmerger period is that it should combine both previous cultures efficiently, but create something new at the same time. In addition, new culture should be passed to all employees to make the performance of a new company efficient. The author states that corporate culture of a new organizatipn should be developed with the use of specific recommendations. He provides seven steps on building a postmerger culture in a company. In general, all key issues of the article relate to the topic because development of a strong corporate culture is important for a company after a merger. If it fails to build strong culture, the firm will have problems with performance and employees, and the risks mentioned above will grow dramatically (Miller, 2015).
Each of the key issues is related to Development of a Strong Culture topic. The first one is that many CEOs and CFOs forget about the importance of corporate culture. They focus on financial aspects of a merger (Miller, 2015). As a result, they may fail to build strong corporate culture in a new company. The corporate culture is a very important part of any company. It is sometimes called a personality of a company. It guides all aspects of employees work. In general, corporate culture helps them to cooperate efficiently due to their common behavior, values and beliefs. It makes possible not only to reach corporate goals, but also to satisfy employees, stockholders, and the public (Desson & Clouthier, 2010). Therefore, the cases when CEOs and CFOs forget about corporate culture before and during the merger fail prove that corporate culture is very important. As a result, it causes the failure of the whole business. Thus, this issue is directly related to Development of a Strong Culture topic.
The second issue is that mergers can cause many risks, including corporate culture ones. The author states that a merger should create a new corporate culture that satisfies all parties. If it is not formed, risks may occur (Miller, 2015). This issue is related to Development of a Strong Culture topic because it shows that good performance and absence of risks is impossible without strong corporate culture.
The third issue is about the difficulty in developing a new corporate culture after a merger. The problem grows because not all managers know how to build it. The author studies this issue and makes several recommendations on building a strong corporate culture in a new company. Those recommendations include seven steps. The first one is making the corporate culture the main component of management. It helps to build a strong culture because managers are focused on this task. New corporate culture should be recognized as a major challenge for change management. All other tasks should be based on the culture, and it will help to make it strong. The second step is identifying separate cultures that existed before and reporting them to senior managers. All key elements should be studied in order to create a new strong culture based on them. On the third step, cultural work should focus on the tangible and the measurable aspects, since these are the only things that can be used efficiently to build a new corporate culture. The fourth step is to consider strengths of both previous cultures. It is better to take strength and refuse from weaknesses. On the fifth step, a decision-making process that uses both cultures should be applied. It will help to make a new culture stronger and positive for both companies. On the sixth step, an employee brand should be developed. Integrating employees from two companies helps to better build a new culture. On the final stage, all employees are informed about the new culture (Miller, 2015). Therefore, all steps help to resolve the issue of difficulty of a new strong corporate culture building.
In conclusion, the article Seven Steps for Addressing Postmerger Cultural Issues by Fred Miller is related to the chapter about corporate culture, and, in particular, to Development of a Strong Culture topic. In the article, the author focuses on the issues of building a new corporate culture that occur after a merger. He makes advices and describes seven steps that are required to build it. The first issue is that many CEOs and CFOs do not consider corporate culture important, preferring financial issues, and this is a great mistake. Corporate culture is often called a personality of a company; therefore, it should be under attention and made stronger in order to improve performance. The second issue under consideration is that bad corporate culture of a new company can cause many risks. Managers should avoid them by making corporate culture stronger. The third and the most important issue is that not all managers know how to build a new culture well. Therefore, Fred Miller describes seven steps that should be passed in order to create a strong corporate culture in a new company. Iit is important to focus on the process and study well the cultures of both companies. After that, the culture should be built on the basis of two cultures, in particular, on their benefits. When developed, new culture is passed to all employees. Therefore, the article focuses on the difficulties of strong culture development, and provides advice on how to build a strong corporate culture in a postmerger company.
