POST-MERGER INTEGRATION ISSUES: THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY APPOINTMENT OF NEW MANAGERS FOR SUCCESSFUL PMI

Managers in the 21th century need to understand how to best show leadership in a merger – not least because of the many unsuccessful post-merger integrations that have been reported in many case-studies. The human factor is fundamental to preventing post-merger failure. A longitudinal case-study, that follows a merger in the public sector, aims at verifying the recommendations in the literature on how to prevent and counter resistance to change. The administrators, whose opinions were investigated, were enthusiastically looking forward to the merger, even though they expected changes to both their information systems they use for daily work and their routines. They looked forward to the merger even as they lacked individual information about their work situation after the merger. After the merger their attitudes changed as a new more authoritative leadership style emerged that was not appreciated. The new top managers were externally recruited and became part of the merger process at a very late stage when they could not build trust with the organization anymore. Our findings confirm prior research findings about the importance of management involvement throughout a merger. Hence new managers should be appointed early in the process so they can take active part in decision-making and trust-building. The longitudinal case-study aims at adding to the knowledge base that can facilitate post-merger implementations.