Individual Reactions to a Merger of Two Small Firms of Brokers in the Re-Insurance Industry: A Total Population Survey

The purpose of this paper is to describe the attitudes to the merger of all the staff of the newly merged firm, with a view to discovering something more about the merger process. The paper begins with a brief description of the industry and is followed by a history of the merger. Then comes an analysis of the questionnaire administered by the researcher to all members of the firm. The analysis shows that there are four crucial stages in the merger: the Planning stage, at which the details of the merger have to be worked out; the Anxious stage, during which the people concerned are apprehensive about the merger; the Merger itself; and the Evaluation stage, at which what has been done is weighed in the balance of cost-effectiveness. The paper ends with an attempt to add a new dimension to the dynamics of organization change, showing the interrelationships of the Harrison model, and suggesting possible routes through it.