Your organization has a distinctive personality, commonly called its corporate culture. Just like an individual’s personality, that set of attributes makes a big difference in how your company functions. It influences the kinds of companies it could partner with. And it is not easy to change.
The concept of corporate culture became especially prominent in the 1970’s and 1980’s. When deregulation of various industries triggered rampant “merger mania” within many of those industries, organizational researchers noted that a surprisingly large number of mergers and acquisitions failed to realize their potential. After all the due diligence was done, and the projected financial performance of the new entity was identified, the results were often much less than envisioned.
As researchers began to dig into the reasons why so many mergers and acquisitions failed or at least underperformed, a common denominator became starkly visible. In many cases the root cause was simply the clash of cultures - corporate personality conflicts, if you will. It was not that the legal and financial guys didn’t do their homework, or that customer preferences and the market-demand for the company’s products and services suddenly shifted. It wasn’t only employee fear and uncertainty, resentment and resistance (usually on the part of acquired or junior partner), or anxiety (on the part of both - with folks wondering, “am I in a duplicated and possibly soon to be eliminated function?”). Beyond those understandable morale-killing qualms, there were often “old culture vs. new culture” issues. If the distinctive corporate cultures of the two partners (so-called) mismatched, the marriage would probably not be a long and happy one. Researchers coined the term “merger syndrome” to capture the malaise that settled over many such attempted unions.