Timothy Galpin and Mark Herndon
The company closed the deal over two‐years ago, but the organization is still not operating as one company: results are lagging, customers are defecting, and shareholders are…
Abstract
Purpose
The company closed the deal over two‐years ago, but the organization is still not operating as one company: results are lagging, customers are defecting, and shareholders are restless. Management thought that they checked off all of the right deal actions, including: a thorough due diligence (operations, finances, systems, and people); assigning appropriate integration resources early and keeping them available throughout the integration process; developing and executing detailed integration plans; and measuring, tracking, and reporting implementation progress against the integration plans. But, somewhere, somehow, something went wrong – and it has to be fixed, or else. The transaction itself was completed too long ago for any action now to be truly considered “post‐deal integration.” The situation the company now faces is “merger repair.” Unfortunately, they are not alone. Numerous, well‐intentioned deals have gone sour either due to gross negligence or because of a series of small – but in aggregate very powerful – mistakes and/or delays. This article provides a method to identify whether or not a company is in need of “merger repair,” and an approach (including supporting tools and templates) to perform the needed “repairs.”
Design/methodology/approach
In working with numerous clients on merger integration efforts we have identified that, not only do many companies struggle with their immediate M&A integration efforts, but they also suffer chronic performance issues caused by past integration efforts that have been allowed to linger and/or have been managed poorly.
Findings
Conducting M&A integration efforts poorly creates lasting business performance issues (e.g. poor customer service, lower than desired productivity, lack of cost control, and/or unrealized revenue improvement) long after a deal is closed. Almost half (49 percent) of the respondents to The University of Dallas Graduate School Of Management's, 2006 Mergers and Acquisitions Survey – The Current State of M&A Integration (including 124 executives and managers from 21 different industries), indicated that their company is in need of “merger repair.” There are two key tracks of “merger repair” companies can pursue to first get the business back on track, and then to improve the organization's future M&A integration competency.
Originality/value
This article advances the current theory and practice of post‐merger integration that, up to this point, has focused exclusively on integration activities conducted immediately (i.e. within the first 6 to 12‐months) of deal close. This article also addresses how to identify and address integration issues that still exist two or more years after a deal is closed, by providing pragmatic tools and templates that practitioners can immediately apply to both identify and resolve situations of “merger repair.” Lastly, the approach described has broad application to companies across multiple industries and geographies.
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Rich DeJordy and Frank Barrett
Although institutional theorists have considered the potential role of emotions in institutional processes for decades, little empirical work has focused specifically on how…
Abstract
Although institutional theorists have considered the potential role of emotions in institutional processes for decades, little empirical work has focused specifically on how inhabitants’ lived emotional experiences affect their engagement with the institutional context. In this chapter, we explore the emotional responses of women entering a traditionally all-male institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, immediately after it formally began enrolling women, but while still steeped in its traditional hypermasculine culture, and who experienced gender-based workplace bullying. We explore both the bullying and their responses based on social emotions, considering them both as targets of their male counterpart’s emotions and as inhabitants who experience their own emotional responses. We find a broad range of emotions are evident in incidents of bullying, that institutional conditions predicate a particular form of indirect bullying, and that some women engage in institutional work that transforms being the target of negative emotions such as hatred into more positive emotional responses such as pride.
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C. Shawn Burke, Eleni Georganta and Claudia Hernandez
Our aim is to catalog how the functional behaviors that leaders engage in should change over time based on the needs of the team – thereby presenting a functional view of team…
Abstract
Purpose
Our aim is to catalog how the functional behaviors that leaders engage in should change over time based on the needs of the team – thereby presenting a functional view of team leadership over time.
Methodology/approach
A critical review of the literature on team leadership, team development, and teams was conducted. This information was critically analyzed and integrated to produce a framework serving to depict how team needs change over time, and based on this, highlight the leadership behaviors which should be most critical at particular points in time. Based on the limited amount of literature that explicitly focused on team leadership over time, a series of propositions which flow from the framework are also put forth.
Findings
Great strides have been made in understanding team leadership; however, little work was uncovered that directly focused on how leadership dynamics change over time within the context of the team. Leveraging the limited work that existed, we developed a framework (and propositions) that serves to delineate how team leadership functions change over time. In doing so, we have integrated work delineating leadership functions within transition and action phases of team task cycles along with that highlighting how the role of the leader may vary based on team developmental needs.
Originality/Value
The originality of this chapter lies in its using a functional approach to leadership to argue how the efficacy of particular leadership functions change over time based on team task cycles and development needs. This, in turn, can be used to focus training efforts.
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Marisel Fernandez-Giordano, Mark Stevenson, Leopoldo Gutierrez and Javier Llorens-Montes
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to evaluate the roles of a transactive memory system and the supply network flexibility (SNF) of the firm as antecedents of a firm’s…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to evaluate the roles of a transactive memory system and the supply network flexibility (SNF) of the firm as antecedents of a firm’s supply chain agility (FSCA), also incorporating the moderating role of the transactive memory system; and, second, to evaluate the relationship between FSCA and operations performance (OP).
Design/methodology/approach
Four hypothesized relationships are tested with survey data from 190 high-tech firms using structural equation models.
Findings
FSCA can be enhanced through the transactive memory system and SNF, although a higher degree of transactive memory system weakens the positive relationship between SNF and FSCA. A positive relationship is identified between FSCA and OP, while FSCA mediates the relationship between SNF and OP.
Practical implications
Managers can increase FSCA and improve OP by developing both the transactive memory system and SNF. Given that firms have limited resources, investment in internal capabilities should be prioritized as this appears to be more effective at developing FSCA.
Originality/value
The findings expand the literature by exploring two antecedents of FSCA and by analyzing the impact of FSCA on different measures of OP. Few prior studies have highlighted the importance of the transactive memory system to the operations function.
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Due diligence refers to a comprehensive process of investigating and evaluating business opportunities in mergers and acquisitions. While early-stage due diligence usually…
Abstract
Due diligence refers to a comprehensive process of investigating and evaluating business opportunities in mergers and acquisitions. While early-stage due diligence usually encompasses financial and strategic assessment, one of the most important things in due diligence is looking at organizational culture at an early stage. This chapter takes stock of the existing research and practice in the area of cultural due diligence and evaluates the strengths and limitations. Based on the review of literature, we developed a framework for cultural due diligence to address the limitations of existing approaches. The framework illustrates a process to screen the M&A targets, gain insight into the target firm’s culture, and identify integration challenges. The process starts with more unobtrusive, indirect, and informal assessments of the target firm’s culture and moves onto more obtrusive, direct, and formal assessments.
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Keith Herndon and Vicki Krueger
This application brief explains the creation and execution of a leadership training program within the context of journalism education. The news media has experienced profound…
Abstract
This application brief explains the creation and execution of a leadership training program within the context of journalism education. The news media has experienced profound changes in an era of digital disruption. Massive job loss, financial distress, and ownership consolidation have resulted in a chaotic industry. Promising young journalists have few leadership development mechanisms for learning how to interpret the environment they are about to enter. This program provides student leaders a framework for understanding and coping with the news industry’s challenges. It relies on principles of leadership education to explore change management strategies in times of disruption and emphasizes the ethical responsibilities of news media leaders. Leadership is presented as an active concept based on a model of being and doing.
Arieh Riskin, Peter Bamberger, Amir Erez and Aya Zeiger
Incivility is widespread in the workplace and has been shown to have significant affective and behavioral consequences. However, the authors still have a limited understanding as…
Abstract
Incivility is widespread in the workplace and has been shown to have significant affective and behavioral consequences. However, the authors still have a limited understanding as to whether, how and when discrete incivility events impact team performance. Adopting a resource depletion perspective and focusing on the cognitive implications of such events, the authors introduce a multi-level model linking the adverse effects of such events on team members’ working memory – the “workbench” of the cognitive system where most planning, analyses, and management of goals occur – to team effectiveness. The model which the authors develop proposes that that uncivil interpersonal behavior in general, and rudeness – a central manifestation of incivility – in particular, may place a significant drain on individuals’ working memory capacity, affecting team effectiveness via its effects on individual performance and coordination-related team emergent states and action-phase processes. In the context of this model, the authors offer an overarching framework for making sense of disparate findings regarding how, why and when incivility affects performance outcomes at multiple levels. More specifically, the authors use this framework to: (a) suggest how individual-level cognitive impairment and weakened coordinative team processes may mediate these incivility-based effects, and (b) explain how event, context, and individual difference factors moderators may attenuate or exacerbate these cognition-mediated effects.