Mergers and Acquisitions - How Culture Can Make or Break Your Strategy - Part 1

In the current economy you will hear a number of words and phrases used when discussing M&A activity. Many are 'cautious' and waiting for the 'financing shortage' to loosen up. Where M&A's are discussed the recommendation is that they be 'well thought out' and 'carefully executed.

Whether it is to enter new geographic markets, acquire new technologies, build scale or to gain access to lower cost operations -- M&A's remain a viable strategy. In fact several studies indicate that acquisitions made during a downturn outperform those made during more healthy economic climates on most relevant performance metrics.

Regardless of the economic climate, having a sound due diligence process and a thoughtful culture integration process will help an organization avoid the most common cause of M&A failure...the 'culture clash.' Denison Consulting has played a role in a number of mergers and acquisitions, including some of the biggest corporate marriages of the past two decades. We have learned that there a number of activities that are critical to the culture integration process and we have developed a set of recommendations for addressing culture issues at various stages of M&A's.

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