 Hi students, we are talking about mergers and acquisitions and because we are concerned with human resource issues in the international context, so we are concerned about how human resource issues and human resource management takes place in mergers and acquisitions. You would remember that we have defined mergers and acquisitions as two different processes and in that you have intra-merger HR challenges in mergers and intra-acquisition HR challenges in acquisitions. Basically in merger, the two companies come together as equal partners and in acquisition, one company completely takes over the other smaller company. Whatever is the case, whether it is merger or it is acquisition, two companies, that means two entities, two organizational cultures, two set of people who have worked separately in a unit previously, they are coming together. So the issue is that of organizational integration. Now organizational integration has been defined as two aspects of integration. One is task integration and the second one is human integration. Task integration is that two companies are working separately. If they come together, they form a new company, they have to integrate the tasks that they were doing, the jobs that they were doing separately, now they will be doing it together. So it is possible that an organization was only selling a particular product but a multinational comes from outside and then they start production and then sale and distribution of those products which they were already just selling. So the production which was taking place somewhere else, now the multinational comes over and starts producing in the country as well. So in that case, the task integration would be integration of the processes of the firm which is, but it is going to be integration of two different type of processes. It is also possible that they are going for large-scale production, they were producing at smaller scales but now they are merged together and they are producing, going to be producing at a larger scale but doing the same thing. In that case, it would be task integration of similar type. That is task integration that what you used to do, you have to do it together, so how do you perform those tasks and how do you integrate them. Now human integration is another aspect, human integration is coming together of two sets of people working in two different organizational cultures, maybe in two different countries and when they come together, they are supposed to be now working together as one entity. So that means that they are going to be sharing the space, they will be sharing the roles, they will be sharing the leadership. So first of all, they will be their leaders, they will be their leaders, they will be mixing up, they will be mixing up the cultures, so these are all the aspects of human integration. Human integration is particularly in one study, it was defined by five factors, number one was visibility and continuity of leadership, that the leadership which was already existing in the prior firms, when there was human integration, so the visibility of that leadership and its continuity, the new firms, they consider your leaders as leaders, they see them, they are visible to them and they continue their leadership roles, that is something which is an aspect of task integration. Then communication processes during integration, how communication takes place, if there are language barriers, then how do you overcome them and then your communication style will obviously be different in both companies, so how do you merge those communication styles, it is possible that more emails communicate through people, in the other companies, over skype or on phone calls, so you have to integrate all these processes, communication processes. Then what type of integrating mechanisms are being used, so how do you cancel your employees, you give them orientation or you just put them on work and leave them alone, and then the acquired personnel retained which you live with, some people, obviously when there are merger or acquisitions, then many people have to leave the company, but you have to do the retained management, so acquired personnel retained and voluntary personnel loss, that people who voluntarily, they are not called to leave, but because they are not comfortable in the new setup or they are getting better opportunities, so they voluntarily leave the organization, so how do you manage that and how do you fill up those positions and roles, that is also an aspect of human integration. Now human integration and task integration, they take place in two phases, task integration takes place at the first level, when you start working together, then first you try to understand the work and you integrate it about the work, so when you start working together, then gradually your cultures and your communication and your human entities also start mixing up, obviously when you start working on something, then first you start understanding the work, then you go towards human integration, but when human integration happens, cultures match, they mix up, so in that situation, then more task integration is achieved, then you start working in a better way, so task integration first, then human integration, then that leads to synergies in task integration. Now there are four different possibilities and combinations in which this integration would take place, there could be level of task integration high and low and level of human integration high and low, now it is possible that a firm starts from both low levels and then it goes towards high level of task integration and moving towards a low level of human integration and then goes for successful acquisition, now there could be the other side in which there could be, it could move towards high level of human integration, but low level of task integration, but then it moves towards successful acquisition, the ideal path is that human integration and task integration go side by side, if one is present, for example if there is high task integration and low human integration, there will be operational synergies achieved at the expense of employees, so your task has been learned, your task has been integrated, but human integration has not happened, culture has not been integrated, so at the cost of the employees satisfaction and all those things, you achieve that synergy on the cost, on the other hand if you have a higher level of human integration and low level of task integration, in such a situation when your cultures have also become mixed up, you sit together, but you are not working, so in such a situation your satisfied employees are, but there are no operational synergies achieved, for a successful integration there has to be a balance between human integration and task integration, so when both of these things they happen side by side, the synergy of merger and acquisition is achieved successfully.