A framework for the human resources role in managing culture in mergers and acquisitions

Scholars, business people, and change agents agree that culture matters in eventual merger and acquisition (M&A) success. Researchers have generated many insights and practitioners have developed many interventions regarding culture in M&A. Managing culture, however, is often a low priority when executives are consumed with the deal's financial and strategic aspects. The authors propose a framework for how Human Resources (HR) can work with business partners in managing acculturation in M&A. They first examine the relationship between cultural differences and M&A outcomes, how culture manifests itself in combinations, and the causes and stages of culture clash. They then highlight the value of a clear “cultural endstate” in M&A and apply classic change management theory to identify actions that unfreeze current cultural mind‐sets, move people toward the desired endstate, and refreeze the desired culture. Their framework specifies HR actions for four distinct cultural endstates—pluralism (in which the partner companies coexist), integration (in which the partners blend current cultures together), assimilation (in which one company absorbs the other), and transformation (in which the partner companies abandon key elements of their current cultures and adopt new values and norms).