The psychology of organisational group mergers: towards organic pluralism

This thesis examines intergroup factors that may prevent a “successful” organisational merger. Towards this end, this thesis focuses on subgroup identities within an organisational merger, and the pursuit of a post-merger context where the existence of pre-merger subgroup identities are accepted and valued, and intergroup conflict is non-existent (i.e., a state of organic pluralism). Models associated with the management of pre- and post-merger identities argue for the benefits of both elimination and retention of pre-merger identities. However, this thesis suggests the answer to the issue of successfully managing subgroup identities within an organisational merger lies in process-based interventions. This thesis contains two theoretical chapters which address: an overview of the organisational and social-psychological literature relevant to the processes of merging groups (Chapter Two), and an introduction to justice literature including methods of increasing perceptions of procedural fairness (Chapter Three). These chapters introduce the benefits of constructing an intervention process within an organisational merger that would alleviate ingroup bias, intergroup conflict and promote perceptions of inclusiveness. The theoretical assumptions of the thesis are then outlined (Chapter Four) and the purpose and original contribution of the thesis is established. Five studies are reported in this thesis. Studies 1 and 2 (Chapter Five) report two field studies undertaken three months prior to a merger (Study 1) and twelve months after a merger had been completed (Study 2). The results from these studies suggest that, although pre-merger subgroups appear ready to move towards an organically pluralistic group, attitudes conducive to intergroup conflict remain present, particularly for low status subgroup members. In addition, the results indicate the subgroup’s social 1 identity may remain some time after the group itself was eradicated, and this may influence group members’ (particularly from the low status group) perceptions of intergroup conflict and attitudes that may hinder organic pluralism. The results of the field studies are summarised (Chapter Six), and it is posited that subgroup members were facilitating a continuity of subgroup membership in the post-merger context through the strategy of ingroup projection, potentially increasing the likelihood of intergroup conflict. The next three studies of the empirical program of the thesis (Studies 3, 4 and 5) are designed to investigate the impact of voice and pre- merger subgroup status within a fictional organisational merger setting and to test the central hypotheses. Status is manipulated in Studies 3 (Chapter Seven), 4 (Chapter Eight) and 5 (Chapter Nine) and voice opportunity is manipulated in Studies 3 and 4. The impact of these variables on the measures of perceived fairness, pre-merger subgroup prototypicality and attitudes conducive to organic pluralism are examined. As a program of research, the methods are refined across the three studies leading to a comprehensive assessment of the factors. Taken together, these studies find that, consistent with predictions, the provision of instrumental voice opportunity within an organisational merger can lead to increased perceptions of fairness and attitudes conducive to organic pluralism. In addition, within an organisational merger scenario, members from the high status subgroup, regardless of voice opportunity, tend to perceive their subgroup as more prototypical of the post- merger group. The implications of these findings and future directions for research are outlined in the final chapter (Chapter Ten)