International Management



Paper Converters Ltd: Clash of Cultures in Post-Merger and Expansion Scenario

Executive Summary

Paper Converters Ltd has taken the decisions of Merger and International Expansions as part of its organizational strategy and facing the issues of employee conflict, discord and tension. Since both of the decisions bring clash of cultures among employees that need to be managed in order to ensure smooth functioning of an organization, negligence to manage this issue has resulted in tensions among employees in Paper Converters Ltd. In this Research Study, we have attempted to provide Paper Converters Ltd with solutions for resolving the cultural conflict and employee discord and tension issues and effectively dealing with them using different strategies.

Introduction

Acquisitions and mergers along with international expansions are the forefront and front line strategic decisions for organizations that are aiming to gain competitive edge over their competitors. Firms make International expansion decision, especially manufacturing firms, in the context of rapid capacity development of an organization in order to keep up with the demand of their products and remove bottlenecks that are limiting factors in their growth. International expansion decisions are also made in the context of cost reduction and management. Therefore, organizations all over the world spend considerable amount of resources and money for pursuing these two strategies because they clearly see a return on their investments and long term organizational growth. However, not every organization see success after making mergers and international expansion decisions as a part of their strategy because success rate in this regard is less then estimable. Several research studies on the subject of Mergers and Acquisitions as well as International Expansions have attributed the failure of quite a few organizations that have pursued at least one of these two strategies to the clash of international and corporate cultures. The failure on the part of those organizations is considered by several researchers on the subject to be a derivative of their failure to understand and manage the corporate/cultural clash between/among the employees of those organizations that emerged as a result of Merger or International Expansion. On the other hand, successful organizations not only prepared themselves for this clash well in advance before the their organizations could have started to experience the effects of Mergers and/or International Expansions, but also made efforts for creating cultural synergy between/among employees in order to optimize the organizational performance (Agrawal & Jeffrey, 2000, Pp.7).

Aims of Study

We have conducted a study on the clash of cultures, both corporate and national, in Paper Converters Ltd that has taken both the decisions, Mergers and International Expansions, as a part of its organizational strategy. Since both of the decisions bring clash of cultures among employees that need to be managed in order to ensure smooth functioning of an organization, negligence to manage this issue has resulted in tensions among employees in Paper Converters Ltd. The objective of this study is to explain to the Executives of Paper Converters Ltd how clash of cultures among employees in Paper Converters Ltd causing tensions and rift ...