Abstract:

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are used by firms to strengthen and maintain their position in their market place. M&A involves organizational change, where some or all parts of the organization’s functions and activities need to be integrated or merged (Seo & Hill, 2005). Integration is hard to implement, and what influences this have on the outcomes has been studied (e.g. Colman & Rouzies, 2018; Graebner, Heimeriks, Huy & Vaara, 2017, Teerikangas, Véry & Pisano, 2011). Moreover, to be successful in mergers and acquisitions firms need to recognize the human capital, the employees, as the people with their knowledge, experiences, and capabilities who are working in the firms. Employee resistance is likely to increase when integration implies organizational change. King, et al. (2020) claim that research is needed to examine relationships between employee resistance and acquisition performance.

This paper reports from a case study, where a family business in Sweden has experienced mergers and acquisitions during a ten year period of time. The company is designing and constructing artefacts to increase accessibility in and around cars. Data is collected by meetings with the management group in the department located in Sweden, and by internal documents provided by the company. Data was collected during two meetings, each lasting about three hours, and one meeting lasting in one hour, where the management groups talked about the company’s challenges related to the employees’ reactions on the organizational changes.
The firm has become a global company in the ten last years, from being a family business. This has meant higher production requirements and increased production measurements, which has led to staff experiencing stress and increased dissatisfaction with working conditions. The staff experience the organizational changes negatively. More people resign and knowledge from the company disappears. A new digital application aims to promote employees’ work-related health. The management has surveyed the staff and made an analysis regarding health, recovery and job satisfaction at the company. This clearly showed that a clear strategy is needed to go forward with both short-term and long-term goals for well-being in the workplace, with a coupling between the employees’ effort and the rewards from the company. It is believed that the digital application can support the process forward to a sustainable workplace for the employees.

References:
[1] Colman, H., & Rouzies, A. (2018). Postacquisition boundary spanning: A relational perspective on integration. Journal of Management, 0149206318759400.
[2] Graebner, M., Heimeriks, K., Huy, Q., & Vaara, E. (2017). The process of postmerger integration: A review and agenda for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 11, 1–32.
[3] King, D. R., Bauer, F., Weng, Q., Schriber, S., & Tarba, S. (2020). What, when, and who: Manager involvement in predicting employee resistance to acquisition integration. Human Resource Management, 59(1), 63-81.
[4] Seo, M. G., & Hill, N. S. (2005). Understanding the human side of merger and acquisition: An integrative framework. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 41(4), 422-443.
[5] Teerikangas, S., Véry, P., & Pisano, V. (2011). Integration managers' valuecapturing roles and acquisition performance. Human Resource Management, 50(5), 651–683.

Keywords:

Organizational change, employees, sustainable workplace, work-related health, digital application.