The New Data From the Interview Responses HR Paper Example

What Can be Confirmed by the New Data?

The new data from the interview responses confirms almost all the concerns expressed in the literature review. In every new case of mergers and acquisitions, the organizations itself is poised to have their shortcomings that are not healthy for the success of the plan to integrate cultures. Beyond the organization's missteps, there are myriad challenges that come from the fact that little has been done by both the organization and the HR consulting firms to facilitate the actual transition of the associated companies into a merger.

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Each HR consulting firm has their idea of what cultural transformation is, and each organization have their problem in attempting to identify and communicate the reasons for entering into the mergers and acquisition deals. The failure to communicate the reason for the mergers translates into a limited understanding of the reasons to follow up the whole process with a well-designed approach to cultural integration (Barkema & Schijven, 2008). The management team has an overarching role to play in enhancing cultural integration, but the effort is punctured if they cannot communicate the need for the process to the stakeholders involved.

Some HR consulting firms find it increasingly hard to enforce mergers because they have conducted inconclusive research into the cultures of the organizations involved in the deal. The failure can be attributed to the unwillingness of the company management to cooperate with the firms and help them access the information they need (Canterino, Shani, & Coghlan, 2015). The firms, therefore, fail to assess and identify what elements of the companies are not fruitful and should be eliminated and what corporate cultures of the two companies are easy to admirable and easy to integrate.

Perspective biases are a perennial undoing of most of the establishment that is part of the deal to merge. The management hierarchies in most companies are inelastic to changes and rigid to the new ideas (Dai, Yii Tang, & De Meuse, 2011). Most management feels that their cultural practices and employees are best suited to control the new dimensions of the mergers. There follows friction between the management structure of the new union, creating an environment of distrust and disunity in the whole corporation due to a section of the company feeling shortchanged thereby resulting into the subsequent failure of the entire process.

From the interview, the respondents are unanimous that the success of the mergers and acquisitions lie significantly with the level of willingness, input and co-operation of the organizational business development team and the management. The senior business management is exclusively responsible for the corporates' financial positions, capability and the cost-saving goals (DePamphilis, 2010). The ways through which the management can frustrate the success of the mergers and cultural transformation programs are manifold. Either the management will not give the cultural transformation program the impetus needed to realize its actualization.

Management egos are part of the significant shortcomings that impede the progress of the successful mergers and cultural transformation programs. Several incompetent attitudes stand in the way between mergers and successful cultural transformation in the organization. Either the management of the merging companies fails to agree on a regular cultural program, the management may fail to release the necessary resources that should facilitate the program, or the management fails to recognize the essence of the whole project (Gunkel et al., 2015). Once the management does not show that the progress is a significant part of the overall transfiguration in the company strategy to increase income, the employs are attuned to give the project little attention. No priority is thus given to the whole program, and it follows necessarily that the whole thing will fail flat from inception. Leaders have not yet learnt about the fact that an organization's goals should lean on their personality traits

Talent retention is a challenge that bedevils mergers and acquisitions. Most employs resolve to quit the organization when the process of cultural integration is done in a way that does not make sense to them. The management and the HR consulting forms at times do very little to make the workforce understand and endorse the process of cultural integration.

The roles of the HR consulting firms remain unchanged. The HR consulting firms have to make the stakeholders of the merging companies to understand the meaning of cultural transformation and its significance in ensuring the success of the organization. The consulting firms must also help the companies by outlining and defining the path to successful cultural integration programs and the responsibility of every member of the companies in making the plan to work correctly.

What is New?

The interview with practitioners has given us insights we would not have come by had we stuck to the presuppositions that are part of the literature review. The literature review fails to address some of the challenges that come with the scope of the organizations that are entering mergers. The response from the field experts shows that handling a cultural transformation program in a big company with subsidiaries at the international scale comes with amorphous cultural variety that are generally difficult to integrate.

Another new challenge that the HR consulting firms face in the field is the unwillingness of the companies' management to purchase the consultancy service as a package. Some of the organizations are interested in purchasing the cultural transformation program guideline alone, desisting from engaging the consultants to help in the implementation of the program. Due to such involvement, the risk is that the reputation of the firms involved will be severely punctured and it will be very difficult for them to convince the world that they are not part of the mess and failure of a process whose guideline they designed.

In addition to the rationed involvement of the cultural transformation implementation programs, the management of the merging organizations are at times fearful, skeptical and uncooperative in letting the consultants to access critical information. When it comes to the time of data and information gathering about the culture of the merging organizations, some companies block the consulting firm from gaining access to the most important information that can lead to the development of a customized guideline for the process of cultural transformation.

The Analysis of the Responses

How do you define the process of cultural transformation?

"We define culture in three concepts: mission, vision and values, right?... And once you definemission-vision-values, you already know where you want to go and what culture you want to go and what culture you want your company to govern. And then what we do is move to the communication part."

"There is always a leading party and that generates, well, first of all conflicts of interest ... A slightly negative view because the one that is leading the process of company X will always tend to have vision under the perspective of company X and many times they are not able to see the good things the company has."

"Many times internal goals that are not realistic are set, because in this process of cultural transformation, which is obviously slow, takes years. It goes little by little, the culture does not change from one day to the next."

The understanding of the cultural transformation concepts differ from one HR consulting firms to the other, and with most companies that contract the consulting firms to help design the guideline to the implementation of the program. The differences are seen from the perspectives of the bodies involved. The implication of the divergent interpretation of the concept is that it breeds perspective biases. There are company management who understand that once they acquire a new company, cultural transformation would mean that the acquired company should align its previous organizational culture with the bigger company. The dominant companies then force the acquired company to adopt new cultures without proper integration; a phenomenon that breeds failure of the whole business establishment.

What is the procedure you follow for cultural transformation and change management?(stakeholders, tools etc.)

"You cannot mobilize a company to something new if you have not told them what it is and if, above all, you do not make them feel important during the process."

"And once you define mission-vision-values, you already know where you want to go and what culture you want (outlining clear strategy) to go and what culture you want your company to govern. And then what we do is move to the communication part."

"First you communicate it to the Board of Directors, which already knows it; then you involve the next level of middle management (communicating the strategy) and so you go down until the entire organization then finds out (conducting research) what is going to work or what will be the new culture, behaviors, habits and others."

"...we touch all the processes, we also talk about the management style and we define it, because the managers have to be an example."

"And then you have to have coherence at the end of the culture with the strategy, I mean ... you cannot do one thing apart from the other, but you either define the strategy and culture (defining culture and strategy), or culture and, as a result of that, the strategy. But the two things have to go hand in hand and pursuing the same goal, because if not, not ... In the end, the mission and vision is what you have to direct where your company is going."

"Before starting a project, documentation is requested (documenting research data). They send you, for example, when we have to send at the end what processes they have. We have to know, apart from interviews and that they tell you what their perception of the culture is existing, either managers or people throughout the organization. That they give you the feeling of what the culture of the company is for them. You then analyze the documentation, the strategy ... that is important, and the documentation of their processes."

"We analyze a lot of information before starting to work with the company ... Or when we are in the initial part of the project, we work a lot with the client's documentation and analyze their template, the average age - which also affects - if there is more men than women (information analysis) ... All this is taken into account, how many women are there in the Board of Directors?"

"Then, the most difficult thing or the challenge was to agree with the Board of Directors (convincing the leadership), for example. Interviewee2 and I went to meetings with the entire Board of Directors, in a room like this you have all the people: the CEO and people from different areas. And you have to make them think for long days ..., that you can be one day, two days ... and let it cool down, return to the week or two weeks, assign them homework, think about it ... Eh ... and you have to talk a lot. They have to do brainstorming dynamics, design thinking dynamics or things like that, so that they finally reach the conclusion."

Responses

"Depending on the needs of the clients, we go to the project and we take care of definingwhat the scope of the project will be according to the needs of the client"

"...in addition to having a strategic alignment and that the whole company is convinced that we must go in that direction to get a change, you have to be clear about the investment, that this needs resources: time, money, bone ... About all the resources that are needed to make this reality."

"Because it c...