Attending to the Internal Audience : a Prerequisite for Successful Mergers

Corporate losses attributable to failed M&A have to date cost an immense amount of resources.Off the bat the undertaken study argues for the case that it is negligence of employee emotionsand reactions during the M&A process that cause the failure rate to be consistently high. Thisstipulation is subsequently built upon with the construction of a proposed theoretical frameworkderived from an extensive examination of relevant M&A literature. A major focus of the studywas to plunge into and explore the world of employee anxiety and stress elicited from looming orongoing M&A, which was accomplished by interviewing individuals that had been top managersduring at least one M&A. Among other motives, narratives were compiled from the interviews inorder to guide the reader to the prevalence of the particular stressors under scrutiny, but alsobecause illustrating these individuals’ experiences through coherent stories is an ample dataanalysis technique course to take as people perceive their lives in terms of continuity and processwhich is the attributes that M&A pertain to. The interviews revealed a number of interesting andimplicative findings, which are summarized in a proposed model presented by the author in theend of the study. The findings are based on existing theory but also derived from grounded theoryobtained from the interviews. There seems to be two sets of stressors affecting the dependentvariables of the study – job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These two sets divergein the urgency and degree of emphasis that they demand from top management in order for theadverse employee reactions to be prevented or mitigated. The proposed model is intended tofunction as a roadmap or check list that top managers can use when conducting the merger inorder to make sure that the facet that matters most in order to ensure a successful merger – theemployees, are addressed germanely