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The literature on Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), cultural differences between organizations have frequently been identified as one of the main challenges in the process of post-merger integration (PMI). Existing research has explored a broad variety of cultural differences in perceptions, such as those relating to expectations, norms, values and beliefs within the respective organizations, and how these affect the process and success of PMI. However, less attention has been paid to the relevance of the macro-societal context to PMI. The ambition of this article is, therefore, to advance our understanding of how macro-level societal factors define organizational cultures and affect the success of PMI.

We draw on social systems theory as devised by Niklas Luhmann, assuming that organizations are always embedded in the macro-level societal context of distinctive realms of social reality—such as the economy, politics, religion and the arts—that make up the so-called “function systems”. Looking at the case of the integration of a Brazilian technology start-up into a market-leading corporation, we analyze the dominant orientations towards these function systems, and the changes in these orientations over time.

The results suggest that differences in organizational culture in PMI can be partly explained by differences in orientations to the function systems. Moreover, forcing dramatic changes of orientations towards the function systems within a merged entity can severely damage its raison d'etre in the first place, potentially leading to, in some sense, an account of “culture murder”.

This article is unique in demonstrating that organizations are multifunctional systems whose culture is defined by the highly specific and potentially varying degrees of importance they place on individual function systems and that knowledge or neglect of these functional profiles may seriously affect the success of post-merger integration. Against this backdrop, the article presents a multifunctional profiling method that may easily translate into PMI management tools.

Executives leading reengineering efforts should consider novel role models—such as that of detective. The author suggests that CEOs could take lessons from Raymond Chandler's famous fictional private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Office work has grown explosively in this century. Once a small occupational category, office work now includes about 40 percent of the American work force. Yet office work continues to be “the familiar unknown”: we worry about its growing size, we are concerned about its productivity, and we design systems to improve it; but our real knowledge of what goes on in the office is very shallow. This article discusses only a few of the many subtle facets of office work that vendors and users must understand to meet the needs of this attractive, but difficult market.

What you can learn from books about other companies depends first on what they've done, and then on how well the authors can explain it. The rise of Microsoft, the renewal of the U.S. Army, National Semiconductor's turnaround, and the merger of SmithKline Beckman with Beecham are good places to find rich material.

In Michael Hammer's new book, Beyond Reengineering, he sticks with the same definition for reengineering that he and James Champy put forth in their seminal Reengineering the Corporation: “Reengineering is the radical redesign of business processes for dramatic improvement.”

Michael Hammer, the consultant often credited with coining the term “reengineering,” inspires top management at a number of cutting‐edge U.S. firms to attempt radical process redesign. Here, he updates us on this evolving management practice.

Michael Hammer sees process as “the Clark Kent of business Ideas”—a concept that has the power to change a company's organizational design.

Organizations that adopt new practices employ managers to make decisions about how to materialize these practices. I examine how these managers move between the meanings and resources found in extra-local and local realms. I find that managers’ practices shift over time from adapting BPR practices to inhabiting BPR as an idea. Managers’ approaches are shaped by each organization’s history of efforts to introduce extra-local ideas. Rather than adapting BPR practices, managers draw on change tools, techniques, and methods that have worked in the organization and integrate BPR work into ongoing interactions, activities, and language in the local context.

This highly polemical and Dutch‐rooted article is intended as a contribution to the debates in both popular and academic literature about business process redesign and similar change programmes. Describes BPR and its logical successor, the “holonic” organization, as operational and technocratic instruments which endanger the well‐being of employees (and are therefore morally disreputable) and which undermine the organization’s strategic potential.