The Role of Corporate Culture After Mergers and Acquisitions. A case study illustrating Wärtsilä Finland’s acquisition of Greensmith Energy Management Systems Inc.
Paola, Mercedes de Lampi (2022)
Rajattu käyttöoikeus / Restricted access / Tillgången är begränsad
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022111422662
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022111422662
Tiivistelmä
Organizational culture provides the members with a common system of norms, beliefs, meaning, and a sense of belonging. When companies are involved in mergers and acquisitions the organizational culture may be disturbed and needs to be harmonized. This thesis aimed to understand the role that organizational culture plays after mergers and acquisitions and to find out what the main challenges were that Wärtsilä confronted during the acquisition of Greensmith regarding organizational culture. In this master thesis, I summarized how the culture was impacted in Energy Storage and Optimization (ES&O) department after the acquisition of Greensmith. I described the experience through the eyes of the employees who experienced the merging process.
The theoretical framework of this master thesis is built around mergers and acquisitions, the model of Schein in Organizational culture, and the dimension of national culture from Hofstede. The methodology employed in this thesis was qualitative data research and performing interviews utilizing unstructured and semi-structured formats. Before the interviews, management was consulted to discuss the research topic and what was the expectation from the research.
As a result of the interviews, it was found out that organizational culture including shared values, and the acknowledgment of people’s reactions and, motives should have been recognized and considered better. It was concluded that the establishment of a clear strategy, cultural assessment, understanding of people’s expectations, support from leadership through a plan and concrete actions including more resources, and how to move forward after mergers and acquisitions should be in place when trying to integrate a new corporate culture. This study could provide insight to organizations on how important it is to share the same organizational culture after mergers and acquisitions based on the empirical findings.
The theoretical framework of this master thesis is built around mergers and acquisitions, the model of Schein in Organizational culture, and the dimension of national culture from Hofstede. The methodology employed in this thesis was qualitative data research and performing interviews utilizing unstructured and semi-structured formats. Before the interviews, management was consulted to discuss the research topic and what was the expectation from the research.
As a result of the interviews, it was found out that organizational culture including shared values, and the acknowledgment of people’s reactions and, motives should have been recognized and considered better. It was concluded that the establishment of a clear strategy, cultural assessment, understanding of people’s expectations, support from leadership through a plan and concrete actions including more resources, and how to move forward after mergers and acquisitions should be in place when trying to integrate a new corporate culture. This study could provide insight to organizations on how important it is to share the same organizational culture after mergers and acquisitions based on the empirical findings.